Editor’s Note: Over a sample size of 859 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 8% when weighted by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high). This, compared to other picks consistently published online, is pretty good. More broadly, it’s adequate 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 for 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.
Lehigh @ Army
To build on their last two wins, Lehigh’s going to need to get back on defense. Army makes 56.4% of its two-point field goal attempts and averages the 37th-fastest offensive possessions in Division I, implying a tendency to score off the break. When they can’t do that, they struggle, shooting just 32.0% on threes and rarely getting to the free throw line, let alone producing once there.
That might be a challenge for Lehigh, and it might require sacrificing what, on paper, looks like an advantage for the Mountain Hawks: height. Admittedly, I don’t know much about Nic Lynch’s footspeed, but the 6’11” sophomore might not see as many minutes today as usual. If that does come to pass, it should be ok for Lehigh—they have a few better scoring options, and Army might force them to shoot a lot outside the arc anyway, something the numbers hint they should be doing more often regardless of opponent. Tread lightly on this one, but there are reasons to like a Lehigh team who may have finally bottomed out.
Pick: Lehigh +4 (-110). Low confidence.
Western Michigan @ Eastern Michigan
Since conference play began, Western Michigan’s yielded the fewest free throws in the MAC on a per-possession basis. Eastern Michigan gets to the line more frequently than anyone in the MAC, on the same measurement. Something, as the saying goes, has to give.
It’s certainly possible that what gives will be Eastern Michigan’s free throw frequency. The boys from Ypsilanti boast a massive lineup, and the boys from Kalamazoo don’t, and there’s a thought that the smaller guy can get away with more than the big guy. Still, EMU’s been bigger than pretty much everyone they’d played this year, and they’ve still shot free throws at an outrageously high rate. And besides that, the second-best team in the MAC at getting to the line is WMU. So, either way, it looks likely the stripe will be busy this afternoon.
Pick: Over 128.5 (-110). Low confidence.
UNC-Wilmington @ Hofstra
The last time these two teams met, a month ago tomorrow, they managed just a 62-possession game, the slowest (or tied for that) for each all season.
Don’t expect a repeat today.
While both defenses do tend to force offenses to slow things down, both offenses prefer to push the pace—especially Hofstra’s. With the game in Hempstead and Hofstra playing their best basketball of the season (the Pride has won five straight, moving into first place largely on the back of an offense averaging 1.17 points per possession over the stretch despite facing all three of the CAA’s best non-Hofstra defenses), the game should comfortably reach the mid-130’s, and more likely than not eclipse this mark.
Pick: Over 144 (-110). Low confidence.
