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Even though we are still in the middle of the regular season, we are having some games this week that I like to call them "pre-playoff games". Lots of intensity, half court defense and games decided by few points. In my notebook I have four games with these conditions: Hornets @ Spurs; Rockets @ Portland; Portland @ Hornets; Spurs @ Rockets. Guess what? All games ended up being under and actually the team that lost these games never scored more than 81 points. Curiously, the Rockets were involved in two of these games and today I expect to see one of their games to enter in this list.

There are a good number of factors to make it happen, not only as both teams have identical records (Utah 25-18; Houston 24-19), but also this will be a revenge game for the Rockets, who lost against Utah in the game 7 in the first round of the playoffs last season. Ok, the Rockets have defeated the Jazz at Utah this season, but the revenge can only be completed with a home win, as it was also in Houston that they have lost the game 7 in the playoffs last season. It's only necessary to read what Rafer Alston said about this game:

"You want to get them, and you want to show yourself you can beat that team," guard Rafer Alston said. "You still feel that feeling in your stomach about losing to them in the playoffs."

So, the Rockets will play this game with a lot of aggressiveness. The line has started at 197 points and in a weird move, we have an extra 0,5 points of juice. These teams have faced each other early this season and Utah lost at home by 95-106, with the points line being at 193 points. It's strange to see the line being higher today. In the game at Utah, T-Mac was the player of the game with a season high of 47 points, 17-27 FG and 11-14 FT. He was just unstoppable! Can he do the same today? No way! T-Mac is still struggling with a knee injury and even though there are rumors that he may start the game for the first time since he cameback from his injury lay-off, he won't certainly be at 100%. He struggled in the last game at Portland, shooting just 5-14 FG.

The Rockets are coming to this game having won 9 of their last 11 games and what has impressed me is their interior defense. They have only allowed 18 points in the paint against Portland and 26 against the Spurs. And we all know that the strongest part of Utah's game is exactly this zone. Today there won't be any easy layups for Utah and the battle will be big.

Utah is coming to this game having won 8 of their last 10 games, but 7 of these games were at home, where they went 7-0 SU. In their last home game, they were just amazing. They scored 127 points, 45-79 (57.7%) FG and 31 assists/9 turnovers. But wait a second! It was against a team that also in the previous game had a terrible defensive game. I remember that before the game against Utah, Sacramento allowed 111 points to... the Clippers! The Jazz have been terrible on the road this season being 7-15 SU right now and all the staff knows that they can only win on the road by improving their defense. The team is 12-8 O/U on the road and in their last away game, they have only allowed 93 points to the Clippers. I say "only" as in the previous 3 games on the road, they allowed an average of 117 points to their opponents! So, I expect a motivated and focused in the defense Utah to try to beat the Rockets tonight.

These psychological factors will make the aggressiveness of both defense to rise today and that's why we are taking the under in here.

www.andregomes.com

Pick : Under 197,5
Odds : 1.90
Stake : 7 / 10
Bookmaker : Pinnacle
Tipster Personal Link/Sponsor:
Date : 2008-01-28
Match Result : 89-97
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