Editor’s Note: Over a sample size of 821 completed bets (this doesn’t include outstanding futures picks), Joe’s picks published here and back at All Things NIT, our former site, have an average return on investment of 9% when weighted by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high). This, compared to other picks consistently published online, is very good. It’s also good when compared to conventional annual investments, and instead of taking a year to bring that return, it’s taking between three hours and seven months. In short, Joe’s got a good track record.
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Two picks today.
As always:
- Lines come from the Vegas Consensus at the time this is written, or the best approximation I can find of it online.
- Data and predictions from KenPom, FanGraphs, Baseball Savant, and ESPN is/are often used and/or cited.
- The blurbs often aren’t justifications of the picks. Often, they’re instead just notes about something or someone related to the pick. Something that interests me. I don’t explain the picks because in general, the rationale behind each pick is the same, so it would be boring to say over and over again that the numbers I use project a good return on investment and I see no red flags significant enough to make me hold off.
Alabama State @ Alcorn State
Alcorn State is charging through the SWAC, bouncing back after a bad loss to Jackson State earlier this month to win four straight. They’re half a game behind Prairie View A&M and Texas Southern for the league lead, and they host each back-to-back to end the regular season. Their offense went cold on Saturday, managing fewer than a point per possession in their slowest-tempo game of the year, but even so, Alcorn’s been one of the biggest movers in rating systems like KenPom over the month of January. In a positive direction.
It’s unclear if the slower pace Saturday was part of what held Alcorn State down, but either way, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for Alabama A&M to try to keep the possession count to a minimum. Should that happen, the home team should still knock down a lot of threes tonight and make the most of trips to the free-throw line, two things they’ve done exceptionally well since conference play began. It’s no lock, but it’s hard to find a better play on tonight’s board.
Pick: Alcorn State -7 (-105). Low confidence.
NCAA Men’s Basketball National Championship
It’s been a few weeks since we talked futures here, so we fired back up the machine this afternoon. Three teams stood out.
Duke, even with a pair of head-scratching losses, is one of the best teams in college basketball. They’ll likely be favored in every game from now through the Sweet Sixteen, should they make it that far. We grabbed them at 10-to-1 odds back on Christmas, so while they’re up at 11-to-1 now on average, we’ll let them be. We only have six picks down (Duke, Michigan State, Ohio State, Butler, Penn State, and Purdue), so we aren’t at the point where we need to double down on Duke to get an aggregate profit in the event they win. If you want them, take them, but if you’ve been following these religiously, no need.
The second team was Kansas, currently listed at 11-to-1 themselves. Devon McCormack is a very good player, and Silvio De Sousa’s capable of a lot, but it’s unclear whether the Jayhawks really need either to compete. Those two alone aren’t a good enough reason to hold off. What gives me pause, evaluating the machine from the outside, is that Kansas has yet to play Baylor or West Virginia on the road. The Jayhawks have one of the best résumés in the sport, but there’s a real chance they lose both those games, lose again to one of those two in the Big 12 Tournament, and fail to capture a number one seed. We might grab them before those games happen, depending how the tide’s changed, but for the time being, believing their odds won’t get much shorter in the next few weeks, we’ll leave them be.
The third team, and the one we’re adding to the portfolio today, is West Virginia. The odds are still catching up to West Virginia, with one prominent offshore book even having the Mountaineers at 40-to-1. There are significant, real reasons to doubt: a pair of losses not as bad as Duke’s, but rather inexplicable nonetheless (at St. John’s by 2, at Kansas State by 16); poor free-throw shooting (332nd out of 353 teams); too many turnovers (278th); inexperience (300th by KenPom’s measure). Still, at even 28-to-1, WVU’s a strong play. They’re a dark horse for a number one seed. Ratings systems thought nothing of them to begin the year, an assumption that’s been disproven but’s likely shaping the odds. They have arguably the best defense in college basketball.
West Virginia’s offense is suspect. It’s decent, but not great. It’s a significant flaw, and one that could bite them hard in March. There’s no law of nature, though, that says a team must have a strong offense to win the national championship. Texas Tech’s offense finished last year 25th in KenPom, but that was after scoring more than a point per possession against four top-twelve defenses in a row. At this point in the season, the Red Raiders had just ended a three-game skid in which Kansas State held them to 45 points in a game. Offenses can come around, and defenses can help them.
No one should expect WVU to do what Texas Tech did last year. But it’s not unreasonable to trust the numbers that say it’s more likely than the odds imply, and by a wide enough margin to justify giving this pick a portion of your bankroll with more than two months between now and the championship game.
Pick: West Virginia to win +2800. Low confidence.
