SMU Mustangs vs Louisville Cardinals Prediction, Odds and Picks for Today, 01/31/26

After an embarrassing 83-52 road loss at Duke, the Louisville Cardinals will return home to the KFC Yum! Center to take on the SMU Mustangs on Saturday afternoon. Despite Mikel Brown’s return to the lineup, the Cardinals were abysmal on the offensive end at Cameron Indoor, scoring just 0.80 points per possession while connecting on only 25% of two-point attempts, 32% of three-point attempts and 69% of free throws. They were also crushed on the glass 47-28 and gave up 1.28 points per possession to the Blue Devils.

Despite being the home team, it’s not going to get any easier for Louisville on Saturday. This SMU team is feisty, coming into this game having won 3 of its last 4, while sporting a top-20 adjusted offensive efficiency per KenPom. They have 3 conference losses – Clemson, Duke, Virginia – but all of them are admirable, and none of them were by more than double digits. Working in the Mustangs’ favor is the fact that they have not played since Saturday, so they will benefit from a couple extra days of preparation and rest ahead of this big ACC showdown – which is ideal when you consider this is somewhat of a revenge angle for them after Louisville embarrassed the Mustangs on their home floor last year. In the era of the transfer portal, these teams hardly look like they did last year, but SMU’s 3 best players in Boopie Miller, BJ Edwards and Samet Yigitoglu will remember that game.

This figures to be a high-scoring game with plenty of pace, but instead of taking the over, I’m going to take the points with SMU. In addition to the extra prep time, SMU has shown more consistency than Louisville, and the Mustangs have played much better in faster-paced games than they have in games against more methodical offenses. Moreover, Louisville has been one of the worst power-conference teams in the country when stepping up against quality opponents – highlighted by Evan Miya’s Opponent Adjust metric. I see Wednesday’s game against Notre Dame as Louisville’s get-right game, but this game figures to be more of a battle.

SMU vs Louisville prediction: SMU Mustangs +9.5 (-110) at the time of publishing. Playable to +9.

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