Indiana Pacers host the NO Hornets.

Pacers are still without O'Neal and Tinsley, but are fighting hard for the last spot in the Eastern Conference, 1 1/2 games behind the Atlanta Hawks. They are on a 4-game winning streak, but the opponents were the Bulls, Knicks, Timberwolves and Bobcats, and they have 5 in a row at home, but again i will add here Supersonics and Bucks to the last 3 from the previous enumeration. So all lower table teams, which doesn't guarantee anything when they face the leaders of the Western Conference. The Hornets are on a 4-game winning streak, and have won their last 9 at home, against some heavy opponents such as Suns, Jazz, Spurs, Lakers, Rockets and finally Celtics. Basically, the best of the West and the best of the league. But now they will play 10 of the last 14 games away, and this is the first task. But Hornets don't really fear their playoff spot anymore, and the sole purpose right now is winning to stay on top and have a weaker opponent in the playoffs, but since all the Western teams of the top are rather equal, this should not be such an important matter. Away from home, Hornets lost 4 of last 5, but had some other heavy opponents: Spurs, Wizards, Rockets and Pistons. This si why tonight i do not trust them to win and cover, as they always start their games very bad with a lot of misses by Stojakovic and bad defending. But after the break, and especially in the last quarter, the Hornets have shown some excellent basketball this season, and in their last 6 games, they manged to turn some 10-point deficits by their brilliant play in that Q. Here are their last 6:

~ 24-8 against the Spurs

~ 28-26 against the Lakers

~ 18-28 against the Pistons -> the Hornets dominated that Q but just missed incredibly, making only 30% of their shots and also the Pistons were already ahead by 15 points

~ 33-13 against the Bulls

~ 31-10 against the Rockets -> Bonzi Wells practically won that quarter by himself, scoring almost 20 points and making 85% of his shots

~ 32-14 against the Celtics

Nothing more to add here i presume, so let's look at Indiana's final quarters in the last 6 games:

~ 34-33 against the Mavericks -> Dallas had a huge lead already, about 20 points and played with the bench in last Q

~ 31-31 against the Magic -> again they were down by 15 before it and Orlando just did not care to widen the spread

~ 29-19 against the Knicks-> Knicks had injury problems and the reserves couldn't take the match late-game

~ 27-27 against the Bobcats -> Bobcats very poor away and did not have any hope of winning the match anymore

~ 31-31 against the Timberwolves -> weak team

~ 35-17 against the Bulls -> a good performance from the Pacers here, but Bulls were even better. The score is related to the fact that Bulls missed 70% of their shots in that quarter

So Pacers only defeated Bulls due to opponents bad luck and Knicks due to weak reserves, while against the others they were balanced, 2 uninterested teams and 2 very weak teams. The Hornets on the other hand had only very hard opponents and except the Pistons game where they missed a huge amount of shots, they destroyed their opponents in the final 12 minutes. So tonight, i expect another bad start from the Hornets and another great finishing.

In the 93-105 home defeat in November, the Hornets lost their last Q against the Pacers 21-23, but Tinsley played back then, and he managed to guard C. Paul very well the entire match. Tonight, Tinsley will be missing, and the Hornets have excellent addition Bonzi Wells, who has been growing match by match and has been scoring some nice points in the second half of their games. So take the Hornets to have a good fourth quarter. Good luck.

Pick : Hornets -1 in 4th quarter
Odds : 1.91
Stake : 6 / 10
Bookmaker : 5dimes
Date : 2008-03-26
Match Result : 27-29
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