Louisville Cardinals vs Baylor Bears Prediction, Odds and Picks for Today, 02/14/26

College basketball fans will be treated to a rare mid-February, non-conference matchup on Saturday when the Louisville Cardinals take their 4-game winning streak to Fort Worth to play the Baylor Bears at the neutral site of Dickies Arena. Unlike Louisville, Baylor is in the midst of its third losing streak of the season — dropping its last 2 games to Iowa State and BYU by 6 combined points over the last week. Baylor has struggled mightily against its best offensive opponents, sitting 0-7 SU against KenPom’s top-50 offenses with an average margin of defeat greater than 13 points per game. Unfortunately for the Bears, the Cards are top-12 in efficiency and top-25 in effective field-goal percentage with a bevy of 3-point shooters and a freshman phenom in Mikel Brown Jr., who just went off for 45 points on 10 made threes against NC State. 

Meanwhile, the Cardinals haven’t fared well against opponents who pull in offensive rebounds at an elite rate, which is one of the few things Baylor does well. The Bears are top-20 in offensive rebounding rate, and they’ll be even better in this department if Dan Skillings returns from his 3-game absence. You could argue both of these teams are paper tigers. In fact, only 3 teams in the country rate lower than Louisville in EvanMiya’s Opponent Adjust metric, which compares how a team plays against above-average teams to how it plays against below-average teams — and Baylor is one of them. In other words, both the Cards and the Bears have really struggled to step up in class this year. 

Louisville is just 4-5 ATS away from home, and with wins over Kentucky, Cincinnati, Indiana, Virginia Tech, SMU and NC State, the Cards already have a strong tournament resume. With a highly-coveted top-4 seed and double-bye in the ACC Tournament within reach, I question Louisville’s motivation to win this odd non-conference game by the necessary margin. Add in their issues covering spreads away from home and their struggles in games against strong offensive-rebounding teams, and taking the points with Baylor becomes more appealing — especially when you consider the Bears have covered in 3 of their last 4 and are playing much closer to home than the Cards.

Louisville vs Baylor prediction: Baylor +7.5 (-110) available at time of publishing. Playable to +6.5.

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