Editor’s Note: Over a sample size of 874 completed bets (this doesn’t include outstanding futures picks), Joe’s picks published here and back at All Things NIT, our former site, have an average return on investment of 7% when weighted by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high). This, compared to other picks consistently published online, is pretty good. More broadly, it’s adequate when compared to conventional annual investments, and instead of taking a year to bring that return, it’s taking between three hours and seven months. In short, Joe’s got a good track record.
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Just one pick today.
As always:
- Lines come from the Vegas Consensus at the time this is written, or the best approximation I can find of it online.
- Data and predictions from KenPom, FanGraphs, Baseball Savant, and ESPN is/are often used and/or cited.
- The blurbs often aren’t justifications of the picks. Often, they’re instead just notes about something or someone related to the pick. Something that interests me. I don’t explain the picks because in general, the rationale behind each pick is the same, so it would be boring to say over and over again that the numbers I use project a good return on investment and I see no red flags significant enough to make me hold off.
Penn @ Yale
The last time Penn played Yale, they held the Bulldogs to 0.91 points per possession, 44.1% shooting inside the arc, and 25.9% shooting outside it, coming back from five points down with five minutes remaining to win by eight. It was one of the best defensive performances anyone’s managed against Yale this year (season averages in those metrics: 1.08 adjusted ppp, 53.6% 2PFG, 36.8% 3PFG), and Penn’s own ball protection (just six turnovers) kept the Quakers in it through unhopeful stretches.
Don’t expect a similar result tonight.
Yale’s laid exactly one egg each of the last three weekends. They lost to Harvard at home. They had the aforementioned no-show in the Palestra. They required two overtimes to win at Cornell last week. But this doesn’t mean they should be expected to lay an egg every weekend. For one thing, in the season’s first Friday/Saturday series, Yale won both handily, making it a one-out-of-four deal, rather than an every-weekend affair, but for another, the sample size is just too small, and Yale’s just too good, to take that trend as anything meaningful. Penn’s far from a bad team. Winning won’t come easy for the Ivy League leaders. Still, a comfortable victory is the median result here, and it’s fair to expect that.
Pick: Yale -8.5 (-110). Low confidence.
