Editor’s Note: For a little more than three years now, Joe has been publishing picks here and back at All Things NIT, our former site. Overall, the results have been positive, with an average return on investment, per pick, of 0.0% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 2,037 published picks, not including bets that remain pending, like futures. So…dead even. All of that, for dead even.
Use these picks at your own risk. Only you are responsible for any money you lose, and you should not bet more than you can afford to lose. If you have a gambling problem, get help.
Lines for these come from the Vegas consensus or the closest approximation available at the time picks are written, unless otherwise noted. KenPom is heavily used in making college basketball picks.
We did look at the NEC Tournament futures, but we didn’t see any value there. Wagner and Bryant each won in 40% or 41% of our simulations, and they’d need to be up around 46% to be valuable. The next teams in line were more severely overpriced.
Still, it’s conference tournament season, and this is when our bets historically have done well. We begin:
Central Connecticut State @ Fairleigh Dickinson
It’s basically the NEC play-in game, and it might not be as ugly as some fear. Despite each team being near the bottom in every national rating system, the fact they play at the same level should make it more palatable, and it figures on paper to be a rather good game.
My best guess for why the total’s here, a bit lower than KenPom would have it, is that Fairleigh Dickinson doesn’t allow teams to shoot many threes, and that’s where CCSU gets its points. As a conference, though, the NEC’s on the low end of three-point attempts per field goal attempt, implying that may be more a factor of the FDU schedule than pure defensive tendency, and really, this is more likely to come down to which team controls the tempo. CCSU likes to play slow. FDU likes to speed it up. FDU’s the favorite, playing at home. Look for them to get the Blue Devils on the run. At least enough.
Pick: Over 138 (-109). Medium confidence.
