It’s been a nice two days, putting us 4–0 on March college basketball at this extremely early moment. We’re staying on main street tonight. We had fun with the ASUN, but that got a little too scary at the end.
Kansas at Houston
Bill Self has a great record on Big Monday…
At home.
We think that might legitimately be affecting this. The narrative’s so widespread that I had to go look it up and confirm it was only an Allen Fieldhouse stat. Add that to a natural public instinct that Kansas will right the ship and some customary public distrust of Houston, and we think the opportunity lies with the Coogs here.
Pick: Houston –9.5 (–110). 10.00 units to win 9.09.
UCLA at Northwestern
Pivoting to something a little different: We’re taking a team total. Kenpom has this game at 67–66 in UCLA’s favor, and it’s a close 67–66 (one-point games can cover a lot of distance in win probability). Markets have the spread at 3.5 and the total at 131 as Northwestern continues to react to the losses of Jalen Leach and Brooks Barnhizer by…winning?
The Wildcats are .500 since each of those two went down for the year. Their kenpom rating has hardly changed. At some point, we should believe they’re as good as their results.
Why the total specifically, though? 3.5 is a scary number because of end-of-game chaos, and we like the over (we’ve liked a lot of overs lately). This is a way to straddle the line a little bit, and we’ll happily take the –115 given the markets imply a 67.25–63.75 final mark.
Pick: Northwestern over 63.5 points (–115). 10.00 units to win 8.70.
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I am only roughly 90% confident in these numbers. We’ll get that Google Sheet up soon which tracks all our bets this year.
2025: –58.15 units (started with 1,000-unit bankroll)
2025: –3% average ROI (weighted by unit; sample size: 114 single-game markets)
Pre-2025: 0% average ROI (worse when limited to only sports)
Units taken from best odds we can find at major sportsbooks available to most Americans.
These bets are not investment advice. If you’re worried you or someone you know might have a gambling addiction, call 1-800-GAMBLER for free, confidential help.
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