Evansville vs. Illinois State prediction: Why Illinois State is favored to win men's college basketball matchup [1/1/2026]

Illinois State and Evansville will lock horns in men's college basketball action at CEFCU Arena on New Year's Day, with tipoff at 3:00 PM ET.

Based on updated simulation results, Dimers' advanced college basketball model predicts Illinois State as the most likely winner of the Evansville vs. Illinois State game.

This article offers a closer look at Thursday's matchup, including an expanded look at the predicted score, best bets and picks.

Evansville vs. Illinois State prediction: Who will win and cover?

Using trusted machine learning and data, we have simulated the outcome of Thursday's NCAA basketball game between Evansville and Illinois State 10,000 times as part of our men's college basketball predictions coverage.

Our independent predictive model currently gives Illinois State a 91% chance of defeating Evansville. Our predicted final score has Illinois State winning 81-67.

According to our model, the bookmakers have got it right, and Evansville and Illinois State each have a 50% chance of covering the spread, while the 144.5-point over/under has a 53% chance of going over.

Evansville vs. Illinois State odds

We have sourced the best men's college basketball odds in America for this game, which are listed here:

All odds are correct at the time of publication and are subject to change.

Evansville vs. Illinois State picks and best bet

After matching our predictions against the best current odds, we can reveal our picks for each of the major markets. Plus, find our best bet for the game below: