Today’s Best Bets: More Miami Basketball

Purdue almost gave us a nice start to the weekend, but they scored a few too many points, leading to a split. Here’s what we’ve got for Saturday college basketball, Sunday college basketball (we’ll update odds tomorrow morning), and tomorrow’s NFL conference championships, where we already put half our units down on Monday.

AFC and NFC Championships

No changes to the lines here since Monday, besides the odds wiggling around a little bit. Will the Chiefs step up their play to meet the moment? Is Jalen Hurts healthy enough for the Eagles to be a good version of themselves? Our impression is that the true lines on these should be 5.5 and something slightly favoring the Bills. That makes us like the Bills play a lot (the Chiefs playing three points better than their expectation would be a significant improvement) and the Commanders play a little (we’d be fine with an average Eagles performance).

Pick: Commanders +6 (–110). 15.00 units to win 13.64.
Pick: Bills +2 (–115). 15.00 units to win 13.04.

Miami @ Cal

On the basketball court, the market’s only giving Cal 2.5 more points than kenpom is. We don’t think the market’s fully grasped what Miami is doing. We think this looks a lot like Wednesday night.

Pick: Cal –10.5 (–105). 10.00 units to win 9.52.
Pick: Under 151 (–110). 10.00 units to win 9.09.

Northwestern @ Illinois

For tomorrow, we think Illinois bounces back from the Maryland blowout and gets some revenge on Northwestern, who beat the Illini in Evanston. Again, we don’t expect this to be close.

Pick: Illinois –8 (–105). 10.00 units to win 9.52.
Pick: Under 150 (–110). 10.00 units to win 9.09.

**

I am only roughly 90% confident in these numbers. We’ll get that Google Sheet up soon which tracks all our bets this year.

2025: –44.47 units (started with 1,000-unit bankroll)

2025: –4% average ROI (weighted by unit; sample size: 35 single-game markets)

Pre-2025: 0% average ROI (worse when limited to only sports)

Units taken from best odds we can find at major sportsbooks available to most Americans.

The Barking Crow's resident numbers man. NIT Bracketology, college football forecasting, and things of that nature. Fields inquiries on Twitter: @joestunardi.
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