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 0.4% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 2,005 published picks, not including bets that remain pending, like futures. 0.4% doesn’t sound amazing, but we’re publishing it, aren’t we?
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.
Northern Iowa @ Loyola
For those of us struggling in our work life, Northern Iowa’s return to competence over the year has been inspiring. The Panthers have won five straight, beat Drake last weekend down in Des Moines, and haven’t lost in regulation since December 23rd, when they fell by a single bucket to Wyoming, who we’ve since learned is a mighty foe. The team that dropped a home game to Nicholls State to open the year and started the season 2-5 overall has resurrected itself, and today they have a chance to rip open the Missouri Valley Conference, one bolstered by the absence of Marquise Kennedy, Loyola’s best player.
The KenPom line, which doesn’t directly take Kennedy’s absence into account (it’s injury-blind, so it doesn’t say, “Without Kennedy, Loyola is XX% worse,+ but it has been using inputs from the last two games, in which Kennedy hasn’t played), is Loyola by nine. Using Evan Miyakawa’s site, the gap between Loyola and Northern Iowa shrinks by about an eighth when taking injuries into account. With home court advantage worth roughly three points (it’s funny how similar this is in football and college basketball), we’re therefore looking at a true spread of six without injuries, a true spread around five with injuries, and a home-court-adjusted spread of eight with injuries.
Beyond that, it just isn’t a good matchup for UNI. Their best asset is their defensive rebounding, but Loyola doesn’t rely on second chance points. They’re great at scoring from the line, but Loyola’s loath to foul. They give up a lot of their points from deep, and Loyola’s both willing to shoot threes and adept at making them, with Kennedy not a shooter and therefore that tendency probably amplified today.
Northern Iowa could rip open the MVC here in a few hours. More likely, though, Loyola gets a safe win and moves one step closer to holding on to its at-large quality résumé.
Pick: Loyola -6 (-110). Low confidence.
