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 2% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 1,914 published picks, not including bets that remain pending, like futures. 2% 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.
We’ll start with the Myrtle Beach Bowl, then move to college basketball.
Myrtle Beach Bowl: Old Dominion vs. Tulsa
We continue this attempt, where we pick the team to cover whose head coach has the better record in bowls (premise: said coach might be coaching more to win than his opponent). We’re 3-5 so far.
Pick: Old Dominion +7.5 (-110). Low confidence.
***
College Basketball
South Carolina State @ The Citadel
We’ve written about The Citadel’s tempo shift before, but I’m not sure we’ve adequately stressed the defensive step up that’s accompanied it. The home team here is one of the most effective in the country at stopping shots from going in the basket, with the twelfth-best defensive effective field goal percentage in the country. It’s come largely against bad teams, but…South Carolina State’s kind of a bad team. As long as The Citadel can hold SC State to 72 or fewer, we’ll hit on at least one of these, and this might not be much more than a 72-possession game.
Pick: The Citadel -11.5 (-110). Medium confidence.
Pick: Under 155.5 (-110). Medium confidence.
