Posted at 10:00 AM EST. Odds are subject to change.

Northeastern +2½ -111 over Yale

Nov 13, 7:00 PM EST. Northeastern just found its season on Monday night, beating Harvard 74-70 in overtime in the home opener, and that is the kind of win that changes a young team's posture. Louis Bond led the way with 22 points, M. Loughnane added 21 and seven rebounds, and graduate guard Rashad King, the engine of this team at 20 points and six rebounds a game, posted a double-double with 13 points and 12 boards. The Huskies shoot 47.2 percent from the field and nearly 80 percent from the free throw line as a team, which is how you win close games at home: you make your shots, you make your free throws, and you let the crowd do the rest. This is the second Ivy League opponent in a row at Cabot Center, and Northeastern already knows it can beat one.

Yale, meanwhile, is walking into this game on tired legs and a bruised ego. The Bulldogs just got run out of Waco on Tuesday, losing 90-61 at Baylor, outscored 49-31 in the second half of a game that was over long before the final horn. That was their second road game in a row, and now it is a third straight on the road, a short week flight from Texas to Boston, into a building that will be loud for homecoming. Yale is a good program, but good programs have bad weeks, and this is shaping up as one of them. Two rough road games, a long trip, and a home team that just remembered how to win.

The spread tells you everything, basically a pick them with a home court tax. Northeastern does not need to be the better team over forty minutes. It needs to be the better team for the last five, in its own building, with King and Bond closing and the free throw line doing the dirty work. 

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