Editor’s Note: Over a sample size of 862 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 8% 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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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.
Ball State @ Buffalo
When Nate Oats left Buffalo, the possibility emerged that they would slow things down.
That has not been the case.
This year’s Buffalo Bulls are playing faster basketball than any of Oats’s teams there, and playing almost as fast as Oats’s current team down in Tuscaloosa. They aren’t as three-happy, but they’re playing the third-fastest offensive basketball in the country, and that’s even with a high offensive rebound rate extending possessions. Against Ball State, whose defense, while staunch, speeds up the game on its own, look for a possession count around 75.
Pick: Over 146 (-110). Low confidence.
