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 6,904 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, both single-day and futures.
Single-day college basketball bets: On the season, we’re 114–78–1 and we’re down 2.02 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, February 23rd. 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 day.
Duke @ NC State
This is a narrow spread, even if the script would have NC State grab the upset here and reinvigorate their season. We wouldn’t be shocked by that, but we haven’t seen that quality of play from the Wolfpack very often this year, and Duke’s generally been solid on the road.
Pick: Duke –6 (–118). Low confidence.
Texas @ Baylor
Also generally solid on the road is Texas, and with the quick turnaround and Baylor’s bigger win on Saturday, that makes us think the Longhorns keep this one tight to the finish. We don’t love either of these picks, but there aren’t a lot of college basketball games on Mondays, and we like these enough to take the shots.
Pick: Texas +7 (–110). Low confidence.
ASUN Tournament
We found an error in our model just now in which it was awarding home-court advantage to the higher seed in tonight’s ASUN opening round games. In reality, because the winner of the 9/10 game plays at the 1-seed tomorrow and the winner of the 7/8 game plays at the 2-seed, the 9/10 game’s being held on the 1-seed’s court and the 7/8 game’s being held on the 2-seed’s court. We knew they did it like this, but we only checked one source instead of two when we were confirming. Our mistake.
This mistake shouldn’t affect our probabilities too much, but they’ve got us hesitant enough that we’re laying off North Florida and Kennesaw State longshot bets today. Part of that is also that we like the options down below.
What we will take is Lipscomb, who should be relatively unaffected by our error as the 3-seed. Whatever the probability differences are in the 1/9 and 2/7 games, it should almost entirely wash out by the semifinals, when Lipscomb might hit one of those teams.
Lipscomb’s the best team in the ASUN, and while the Bisons have had some bad injury luck, even since losing Derrin Boyd they’ve played better than anyone else in this league, well enough that they’d only be a one or two-point underdog on the road against Eastern Kentucky in a hypothetical championship game. They’ll almost definitely need a road win (either at EKU, Stetson, or both) to get this thing, but they’re good enough to make it happen. 3-to-1 is a combination of good value and relatively high probability that we aren’t going to pass up.
Pick: Lipscomb to win +300. Low confidence.
NCAA Tournament
This is a mixed bag. In order:
Utah’s flashing at about a 50% probability of making the tournament on both our site and Bart Torvik’s. They already have four Q1 wins, they have a chance to get another one at Oregon next weekend, and they’ve beaten Saint Mary’s on the road, which should take care of some of the “road wins” criteria the committee may or may not reference. They beat Wake Forest head-to-head, which could prove relevant, and while they’ve been playing much worse without Rollie Worster, he hasn’t been ruled out for the season. Combining the possibility of him coming back with the thinking that the committee is likelier to look kindly on players potentially returning from injuries than it is to look unkindly on results achieved before injured players were injured, we like Utah at this price.
We keep debating whether to add Tennessee to our championship foundation (we’re trying to bet only teams we fully believe in to win the national championship until the tournament starts, giving us a base of contenders around which we can add teams with good paths). With the debate unsettled, we’ll take them at a small but positive eROI to make the Final Four. Two units.
We thought our model might be overestimating Gonzaga’s potential seed, but DJ Bauer, one of the best bracketologists in the industry, also has them at a 6-seed, and that doesn’t account for the likely win over Saint Mary’s in the WCC Championship. Our model loves this price, and we’ll trust it. We don’t think Gonzaga will take down a team of Purdue or UConn’s caliber, but they might not have to play one of those until the Final Four. 19-to-1 is nice for us.
Finally, Purdue’s odds actually lengthened after the weekend, and with Houston into more questionable territory with the Joseph Tugler injury news, we don’t mind flipping our most profitable path from Houston to Purdue, which this does.
Overall? If we can pick up a little ground on conference tournaments and pick up more ground on Selection Sunday, we might be able to get to a spot where hitting on one Final Four team makes us break even, hitting two Final Four teams makes us profitable, and hitting on the national champion makes this season a roaring success. We aren’t sure how diverse any of the segments of our portfolio will be when this is over, but that’s how we’re conceptualizing it right now.
More conference tournaments tomorrow.
Pick: Utah to make tournament +155. Low confidence.
Pick: Tennessee to make Final Four +280. Low confidence. x2
Pick: Gonzaga to make Final Four +1900. Low confidence.
Pick: Purdue to win tournament +900. Low confidence.
