Editor’s Note: Since November 2018, Joe has been publishing picks here and back at All Things NIT, our former site. Overall, the results have been mixed, with an average return on investment, per pick, of –0.7% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 6,897 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +2.2% across 2,268 completed high and medium-confidence picks. The low confidence picks are the problem. Most of our picks are in the low confidence category.
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’re afraid you might have a gambling problem, seek help.
Odds for these come from the better option between Bovada and BetOnline. We used to use the Vegas Consensus, but it’s no longer consistently available in an accurate form online. We use kenpom heavily to make college basketball picks. We use our own college basketball model to evaluate college basketball futures.
Active markets today: College basketball, in both its single-day and futures forms.
Single-day college basketball bets: On the season, we’re 109–76–1 and we’re down 2.57 units. We’re currently mostly betting moneyline favorites, so our win–loss record doesn’t line up with our net loss.
College basketball futures: We started these on Friday. Our portfolio has 350 units, and it’s looking like we’ll invest roughly 120 of those before conference tournaments are over. We’re currently investing six units per weekday. We don’t plan to place any of these tomorrow or Sunday. (But next weekend, we’re expecting to be in an every day cadence.)
Arkansas State @ Appalachian State
Arkansas State’s hot, but…so is App State? This doesn’t click with our moneyline system, but we like the Mountaineers to get the cover. They’re too much better, and we’re at the point in any sports season where contenders start to get out of rhythm and into streaking.
Pick: Appalachian State –6.5 (–125). Low confidence.
Dayton @ Loyola (IL)
If Dayton hadn’t just lost at George Mason last week, we might like Loyola more here, but if there were any focus issues at play with that one, we expect them to be fixed. It’s a big game for Loyola, but Dayton should be too much.
Pick: Dayton –1 (–110). Low confidence.
NCAA Tournament
Six units today, before conference tournaments start on Monday and we begin exploring those.
We’re putting one of the units on Villanova to make the field. We aren’t very confident in this, but we think the value’s solid, and our model is lower on the Wildcats than Bart Torvik’s, which increases our willingness to make the play. Villanova has a pretty good schedule coming up—higher upside, lower downside—and they’ve been playing their good basketball lately.
We’re putting four of the units on Final Four futures, with two going to Alabama, one going to Baylor (on top of Tuesday’s), and one going to Clemson. This does make Illinois and Auburn not profitable options on their respective own, meaning if (of our eight teams with Final Four futures) only Illinois or only Auburn makes it to Phoenix, our current portfolio won’t profit. We were hoping to avoid this, but that was probably rosy-eyed. We’ll likely need two Final Four teams to make this section profitable, unless we hit a longshot.
Clemson hasn’t lost a game in regulation by more than one point since January 10th, which we think has folks sleeping on them a little. We believe in Alabama to get hot enough to win four straight, especially at this price. We still really like Baylor, and we wanted to keep them profitable.
For our last unit of the day, we’re adding one on Purdue. The value’s there on them, Houston, and Arizona, as it’s been, but Purdue seems the likeliest of those to see its odds shorten after this weekend. Houston has a dangerous game in Norman. Arizona hosts Oregon, which should be straightforward. Purdue hosts Michigan State, which is the kind of game where markets might react if Purdue wins big, and Purdue might win big. Once we have a bracket, we’ll consider teams outside the UConn/Houston/Purdue/Arizona echelon, and we’re open to adding or removing teams from that echelon, but we want to stay inside the echelon as we build this foundation.
Overall, through six days of futures betting, our model’s giving us a 38% eROI on what we’ve bet and a 4% eROI on our whole portfolio. This is circular, because we use the model to identify value, but basically, we’re not losing much ground. Every bet we’ve placed still grades out as positive value in our model’s eyes. That’s a good sign.
Pick: Villanova to make tournament –105. Low confidence.
Pick: Alabama to make Final Four +550. Low confidence. x2
Pick: Baylor to make Final Four +1100. Low confidence.
Pick: Clemson to make Final Four +2500. Low confidence.
Pick: Purdue to win tournament +850. Low confidence.
