Editor’s Note: Over a sample size of 682 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 12% 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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Three 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, Team Rankings, 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.
Virginia Tech vs. Michigan State
Virginia Tech has been one of the more quietly impressive teams, to date, in college basketball. Overlooking them, though, is fair. Aside from a season-opening victory at Clemson, they’ve played no one of much note (three of their five opponents have been ranked 334th or worse in KenPom, though to their credit, they have six games on the schedule against KenPom’s current top four, beginning this afternoon). Still, under first-year coach Mike Young, they’re playing very well.
Before Blacksburg, Young was Wofford’s head coach for 17 years. It wasn’t the most successful stint: 299 wins, 244 losses, five Southern Conference tournament titles (and NCAA Tournament berths), one NCAA Tournament victory. Towards the end, though, with Fletcher Magee to lean on, Young found a formula that worked: Slow, three-point-focused basketball.
It’s a formula that he’s brought with him to Virginia Tech, though without anyone of Magee’s caliber, it might not translate into quite as effective a year as Wofford’s 2018-19, which ended with the Terriers ranked 18th by KenPom. Virginia Tech’s a young team, with over half their rotation populated by freshmen. With Kerry Blackshear at Florida and four of last year’s other five primary players either graduated or in the NBA, Young inherited little experience from the Buzz Williams era.
Nonetheless, the Hokies are shooting lights out on three’s, at 42.2%. They’re protecting the ball well. They’re playing clean defense and limiting good looks from beyond the arc. Yes, it’s come mainly against inferior competition, but it’s been impressive enough to vault Virginia Tech from 54th in KenPom entering the season to 41st this afternoon. They don’t stand a great chance of upsetting Michigan State, but they certainly have the tools to make it interesting.
Pick: Virginia Tech +13.5 (-110). Low confidence.
Bradley vs. Northwestern
Northwestern’s inconsistency (losses to Merrimack and Radford, a victory over Providence) may be notable, but it isn’t all that damning. The Wildcats are simply a bad power conference team—one capable of playing well (Providence is a dark horse in a very deep Big East), and one capable of playing mind-numbingly poorly (this is Merrimack’s first season playing Division I basketball, and while they’re better than about 80 teams, they’re worse than another 270), but overall a team on par with, say, a solid mid-major in a conference lacking at-large-bid contenders (in other words, Bradley).
Bradley’s played well enough over the season’s first three weeks to climb into projected Missouri Valley contention. They’ve generated an extreme number of second chances (16 offensive boards against Radford) and forced a good share of turnovers (a 24.1% rate, 32nd-best in Division I so far), but overall, they look a lot like Northwestern in quality, albeit with a less jarringly bad shooting percentage.
I don’t know if this is a correct hypothesis, but intuitively, it makes sense that Northwestern’s undervalued. They’ve played atrociously in two of their four games, and they’re viewed in the context of one of the strongest conferences in the country. If their inconsistency continues, yes, this could end badly, but only if they’re inconsistent again on the bad side. If they play like they did against Providence, or even right around their mean performance on the season, they should at the very least take Bradley to the wire.
Pick: Northwestern +3 (-110). Low confidence.
BYU vs. UCLA
BYU is missing Yoeli Childs tonight, one of their two best players. Childs, the primary vehicle for the 2018-19 Cougars offense, a great defensive rebounder, and a slightly undersized big man adept at drawing fouls, evidently committed a violation of the NCAA’s agent policy and isn’t allowed to play until December.
Without Childs, ratings systems likely overvalue the Cougars. But at this point, five games into the season, they should be largely adjusted to a Childs-less world. They might be slightly overvaluing BYU right now, but more than anything, they’re probably significantly underestimating the Cougars when Childs returns.
Overall, for tonight, the projection systems shouldn’t be off by much more than half a point. They like BYU. Take the chance.
Pick: BYU to win (+105). Low confidence.
