Editor’s Note: For 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 1.4% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 1,866 published picks, not including bets that remain pending, like futures. 1.4% 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. ESPN’s SP+ is heavily used in making college football picks of all kinds, and FPI is used in making conference championship futures picks.
The Pac-12 pick is part of our futures portfolio, and we may have more hedging there in the morning. The Mountain West pick for tomorrow is not part of our futures portfolio. Neither is the basketball pick at the bottom.
Pac-12 Championship: Oregon vs. Utah
There isn’t great value here—I’m not even sure it’s positive, though it’s certainly close. This is a hedge that brings our profit probability on the conference championship portion of the portfolio up from around 80% to around 91%, while still leaving us that dreamed-of overlap scenario where our Utah futures hit but Oregon covers the spread, something that would leave us with about a twelve-unit windfall on a seven-unit Pac-12 investment.
Pick: Oregon +2.5 (-110). Low confidence.
Pick: Oregon +2.5 (-110). Low confidence.
Mountain West Championship: San Diego State vs. Utah State
There are two things holding these odds down: The first is San Diego State having some uncertainty at quarterback, which is fair, and is why we’re pulling this from medium confidence down to low confidence. The second is that San Diego State doesn’t beat teams by much. But while that makes sense for holding a spread down, it shouldn’t have this bearing on the moneyline. We’ll roll with the Aztecs.
Pick: San Diego State to win -230. Low confidence.
***
Now, tonight’s college basketball play:
Coppin State @ Cornell
Cornell, to date, is averaging the shortest offensive possession length in the country, at 13.8 seconds. Coppin State, to date, is rated as the 31st-fastest-paced team in the country by KenPom. Both teams are pretty bad defensively. You can see why the total’s been pushed up four and a half points since this opened.
The problems here are that 1) Cornell’s defense does seem to slow teams down (Cornell’s average defensive possession length is slow, and on the more extreme side than the average offensive possession lengths of its opponents) and 2) Coppin State is real bad offensively. To the second point, the Eagles have only reached the point-per-possession mark in four of their eleven games. Three of those games were their last three, which might, again, be part of what’s driving this up, but three’s a small sample without any obvious, extreme personnel shift to have driven it.
Now, Coppin State might not need to reach the point-per-possession mark for the over to hit here. But if this goes as expected, the game’s going to need to reach eighty possessions to reach 160, which is possible but not likely. That’s a change in possession every 15 seconds. The national average is 17.3. Cornell’s adjusted tempo reverses out to 16.3.
As with any play close to even odds, we’re looking for something like a 55% chance of hitting. This isn’t a guarantee. But this is the best play on tonight’s board.
Pick: Under 160 (-110). Medium confidence.
