Because Maryland is a tad overrated. Freshman laden team playing slightly over their heads going on the road in conference to a tough environment against a team hungry for revenge? I think that line is about right.
We gotta be worth it today though
I disagree with this. If anything they are underrated. Vegas does not have a good read on them. They are 6-2 against the spread against power 5 teams. They were underdogs against Georgetown, OK St, Michigan, Indiana and won those games outright. Plus they covered by 22 points the last time they played Illinois. This is not a good matchup and unfortunately don't see Illinois winning today.
I think there's an argument for both POVs. On one hand, MD only has two losses, one by two points, including a stretch where they were missing their top two bigs. The eye test, if you weight that heavily, probably will tell you MD is fairly or underrated.
However, looking over kenpom numbers, we're looking at a team who is #53 overall, with the #115 overall SoS, and that is #25 overall in KenPom's "Luck" metric, which may, all considered, lead to an assessment that they are likely to regress to a "mean" here and drop some games.
Personally, I think they're likely a little underrated because we're talking about a team playing multiple freshmen heavy minutes that has yet to have outright bad performances and has been fairly consistent. They seem to have a high floor, have a top 6 defensive efficiency in conference per KenPom (impressive considering # of frosh), and if they improve as the other teams do, will likely finish fairly high in the Big Ten (likely top 6, IMO).
I am definitely surprised to see us favored today, although iirc we opened as underdogs (+2.5?) and bettors have since moved the line our way. I certainly wouldn't expect them to finish without at least 6 conference losses, but I do think they will end up above .500 in conference based on what we've seen thus far which should support my belief that they will finish top 6.