Editor’s Note: Over a sample size of 817 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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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.
Hampton @ Radford
Radford’s stumbled of late, and Hampton’s coming off of their best two-game stretch of the season, one in which they outperformed their numerical expectations consecutively for the first time all year.
We’ve been waiting for a surge from Hampton now that Jermaine Marrow’s back healthy. But while he’s played well (averaging nearly 31 points per game over the last four, with an average offensive rating among the best in the country over that stretch), his team hasn’t performed noticeably better with him in the lineup, with the exception of these last two games.
For Radford, meanwhile, it’s hard to believe they’ll again shoot 20% or 21% on threes, as they did in their last two. Radford isn’t a great shooting team, but they’re adequate, and Hampton’s perimeter defense is suspect.
It’s possible Hampton’s turned a corner, or that Radford turned one in the opposite direction. It’s only been two games, though. That’s not a very significant sample, even in a 30-game season.
Pick: Radford -9 (-110). Low confidence.
Houston Baptist @ McNeese State
Dru Kuxhausen has made two or more threes in every game of the season. He’s shooting 49% from deep. He’s a machine, and this afternoon he should get plenty of attempts against that Houston Baptist defense we talked about on Wednesday—the one that turned in their second-best performance of the season that night by holding Nicholls State to…91.
Houston Baptist’s offense has been playing fairly well of late, and nobody would accuse McNeese of being remotely respectable on defense. But in a game in which the Cowboys (that’s McNeese) are about 50% likely to hit 100, Kuxhausen realistically might hit ten threes, as he’s done once already this year.
Pick: McNeese State -10.5 (-110). Low confidence.
Cal State-Northridge @ Cal State-Fullerton
As with the Jermaine Marrow situation at Hampton, oddsmakers and bettors have been waiting for Cal State-Northridge to come around since Lamine Diane made his season debut. He’s playing well—rebounding like a fiend, getting to the free throw line—the things he did so well last year that people outside the Big West know his name.
On Wednesday, CSUN turned in the performance folks have been waiting for, scoring 83 points in just 61 possessions in an eight-point upset of UC-Santa Barbara, on the road. Now, the expectations are higher, judging by this line, and while the game really is just about a tossup, the numbers still point to Fullerton as one of the better plays of the day. Betting against recency bias is frustrating if you lose. That doesn’t make it the wrong move.
Pick: Cal State-Fullerton +1.5 (-110). Low confidence.
