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 0.5% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 1,995 published picks, not including bets that remain pending, like futures. 0.5% doesn’t sound amazing, but relative to what else you get on the internet?
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.
Butler @ Xavier
The descent of Butler, from a team with top-seed aspirations at points in 2020 to one that’s projected to finish below .500 now for the second straight year (and not due to some horrific schedule), hasn’t gotten a lot of buzz nationally, but it’s noteworthy nonetheless. This was a team that entered the season expected to compete for a spot on the bubble. They’re a long, long way from that now.
The Bulldogs haven’t been especially noncompetitive in terms of wins and losses. They’ve beaten Oklahoma in Norman and Creighton at home in Indianapolis. They’ve lost to just one team not projected to make the NCAA Tournament, and that was a Texas A&M team that could still find its way back to the bubble, at least in theory. The thing about Butler hasn’t been that they’re losing to bad teams. It’s that they’re losing to good teams badly.
Butler’s average margin of defeat across its ten losses is 18.8 points, and while that’s pulled upwards by a 40-point loss to Villanova and a 29-point loss to Purdue, they’ve also only lost twice by single digits, and they’ve yet to lose a two-possession game, let alone a one-possession game. In other words, when the Bulldogs lose, they lose badly. They should be expected to lose tonight.
Pick: Xavier -11.5 (-110). Low confidence.
