The NIT, coaching changes, and the Green Bay Packers. Guess you could say that in the Valvano voice if you wanted to.
St. Bonaventure On, Xavier On, Two More Tickets Punched Tonight
The Bonnies/UVA game was uglier than anticipated, meaning it was actually ugly, and not just slow. Neither team found its rhythm until the second half, and by that point, it was too late to change the aura. Still, a dramatic game in an exhilarating atmosphere, which is great for the NIT.
Also dramatic was Xavier vs. Vanderbilt, where the Musketeers got through again despite taking a lot of hits from their guests. I think something we neglect a little is how good Xavier was supposed to be, and what that means about how good they’re capable of being.
Tonight, we’ve got Wake Forest playing at Texas A&M and Washington State traveling to BYU. It’s hard for these games to be closer than last night’s, but they should be good ones, and these are, as we’ve been saying, the four best remaining NIT teams on paper.
If you follow our best bets, you know we’re heavily in on Washington State and BYU in the futures market as of yesterday. You may even be in on those teams yourselves. If you’re curious how last night impacted it, and what we’re looking for out of tonight…
Close games last night were good for us, as was St. Bonaventure winning. Maybe. We may have preferred Virginia. We’re in a boat now where we have all the value we could want, and what can help us is not the market presenting more value but the market swinging in our direction, viewing the BYU/Wazzu winner as the favorite, and adjusting odds accordingly. We want BYU or Washington State to be the favorite, and we want cheap odds on the other teams so we can hedge and lock ourselves into profit (ideally a healthy level of profit, at that). So, having teams in the Final Four that are ranked much lower than whichever of BYU or Washington State wins is good for us, and close games in the non-BYU/Wazzu quarterfinals keep teams close to their original station in KenPom. By this same logic, we want A&M and Wake to come down to the wire tonight. On the other hand, we want BYU or Washington State to blow out the other. It doesn’t affect us which does it, since they’re roughly equivalent, but we want one to vault into the KenPom top 35 on the back of a dominating evening so the market says, “Crap, we need to lower those odds and raise the others.” We’ll see how it goes.
I mentioned that Bonaventure winning may have been bad for us, and what I mean by that is that I could see the market putting some weight into the crowd and shortening the Bonnies’ odds from where they’d otherwise be. It’d be a small thing, but it might be meaningful, especially on the futures side where small things often get inflated (which is how we got such good odds on BYU and Wazzu in the first place).
Kansas State Got Its Guy, Frank Martin to UMass?
K-State is bringing in Jerome Tang, who’s been an assistant at Baylor for 19 years under Scott Drew. To be honest, I don’t know much about Tang, but that’s a good pedigree to have, and he’ll know the Big 12 exceptionally well, including one of its best programs in Baylor.
Meanwhile, UMass is reportedly targeting Frank Martin. We’d wait until it’s official before we say much about it, but we might miss it if it comes amidst other happenings, so if it does happen: Fine hire. Not a bad one for UMass. The way the A-10’s currently set up, the level of success Martin was having at South Carolina could go a long way for the Minutemen, and I’m not sure the resources are that far apart in the space of men’s basketball at those two schools. I’m sure South Carolina has a bigger budget, because of the SEC money, but UMass is also a state school, and it’s not like the Gamecocks have been rolling in success lately.
Packers Defensive Shuffling
The Packers signed Jarran Reed yesterday to join the defensive line on the same day Za’Darius Smith signed with the Vikings. With Smith, the Packers just didn’t have the money, but he’s also getting a bit older and that isn’t meaningless. Khalil Mack’s only two years older than him, and those players are not equivalent in role but age does matter. Reed should be a solid role player, from what I’m seeing from people who know better than me.
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NIT games tonight, at 7:00 PM EDT and 9:00 PM EDT on ESPN2. Remember, we want a close game in College Station and a blowout in Provo. Don’t really care who wins each.
