Tuesday’s college hoops slate gifts us a top-15 non-conference matchup between No. 8 Miami and No. 12 Kentucky. 

Jim Larranaga’s Hurricanes enter this matchup undefeated with three wins over KenPom top-80 squads (UCF, Georgia, Kansas State). The Miami offense is a wagon. 

Meanwhile, John Calipari may have fallen backward into an explosive, uptempo transition offense. The Wildcats are scoring at will.

However, it’s worth mentioning that Kentucky’s five wins have come against five KenPom sub-100 squads, and its one loss came against then-No. 1 Kansas. 

While these have been two of the more explosive offensive teams in the nation, I think these two squads are due for scoring regression, creating betting value on the total. 

Both Miami and Kentucky are shooting more than 42% from 3. 

The ‘Cats rank fourth nationally in 3-point shooting, canning 42.5% of their long-balls. Rob Dillingham, Antonio Reeves, Tre Mitchell and Reed Wagner have combined to shoot 57-for-117 from deep, a wild 48.8% mark. 

The ‘Canes rank tops nationally in that mark, draining a whopping 45.8% of their attempts from downtown.

Nijel Pack, Wooga Poplar, Matthew Cleveland and Bensley Joseph have made 47 of their 92 3-point attempts, more than 50%.

The Wildcats are scouring 1.6 PPP on guarded jump shots, the nation’s best mark, while the Hurricanes are scoring 1.3 PPP on such shots, ranking 12th. 

Ultimately, these are unsustainable marks, and I suspect these two will make fewer guarded 3s as the season progresses. 

That starts Tuesday night. 

The Hurricanes are allowing only 0.5 PPP on guarded jump shots this season, which ranks top 10 nationally.

Kentucky should struggle to shoot the ball over Miami’s aggressive perimeter defense.

Meanwhile, the Wildcats rank in the 81st percentile of D-I college basketball teams in transition PPP allowed, which could pose problems for a Miami team that gets out in transition at the nation’s 17th-highest rate. 

It’s hard to argue for a low-scoring game between two fast-paced, electric college basketball offenses, but I genuinely believe both offenses are overvalued in the betting markets.

While the total for this game is set at 164 – an absurdly high number, by the way – projection systems set the number a tad lower.

ShotQualityBets projects 158 total points in this matchup, while BartTorvik projects 159 and EvanMiya projects 161. 

While we’re in for an entertaining game, it takes a combination of factors to generate 165 points in a college basketball game. These two teams must run the floor consistently and efficiently while shooting the lights out. 

If these two teams slow the game down or see a shooting lull at any time during this game, it’ll be hard to make up the needed points to play in the 80s. 

I suspect Kentucky’s hot shooting to collapse, but I think the Wildcats can hold their own against Miami in transition.

So, I’ll bet on lulls and shooting regression by taking the Under 164.5 (-104) available at FanDuel. 

I suspect this game stays under 165 points far more often than it goes over, and the market is misvaluing the offenses based on pure hot shooting. 

Under 164.5 (-104) at FanDuel | Play to Under 162 (-110)