Editor’s Note: Over a sample size of 885 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 6% 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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Two 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, 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.
UMass-Lowell @ Hartford—America East Quarterfinal
There isn’t a whole lot interesting to say about Hartford and UMass-Lowell. They each finished near the middle of the America East. Neither has a particularly good chance of making a run this week, though uncertainty over Elijah Olaniyi’s health at Stony Brook opens up a viable path to the title game. Hartford’s defense has a notably low average possession length, and UMass-Lowell’s shows the same tendency, so UMass-Lowell should be able to get out and run, but that’s a stylistic element, not something that should impact the result.
Really, it’s just this: the line is weird. It’s surprising. It’s possible there’s some recency bias (Hartford really muffed it against Maine their last time out), but besides that, it’s just an odd line. On a Saturday, with so many other games for books to manage, it’s worth picking while it’s there.
Pick: Hartford -2 (-105). Low confidence.
Elon vs. James Madison—CAA Tournament, First Round
James Madison has lost a step.
A few, actually.
While their adjusted tempo still shows up in KenPom as the 30th-fastest in the country (out of 353 teams, that’s significant), they played fewer possessions against each of their opponents but UNC-Wilmington their second time through the CAA round robin. In other words, when KenPom predicts them to go 70 possessions against a team with an adjusted tempo of 66.9 possessions, some skepticism is warranted. JMU’s own tempo in conference play comes out to just 70.2 possessions per game, while Elon was the second-slowest team in the league this year.
Still, the over’s a viable play here, and this is why:
For one thing, while 70 possessions is a high number, 64—which is how many possessions JMU played against Elon in their last meeting, on February 20th—is a low one. This will likely land somewhere in the middle, and while that costs us a few points on the total, it isn’t enough to get to a total this low. For another, while JMU’s slowed down the tempo, they’ve also taken steps backwards with their already woeful defense. Over the first half of conference play, they allowed 1.08 points per possession. Over the second half, it was 1.16. For context on how big of a jump that is, teams with an adjusted defensive efficiency of 1.08 ppp are better defensively than roughly 50 teams. Those at 1.16 ppp are better than only nine. Granted, the CAA is a high-scoring league (the second-highest scoring in the country, on a per-possession basis), but the difference in those numbers stands. Just as systems like KenPom haven’t caught up to JMU’s decline in tempo, they’re still catching up to their defensive decline as well.
If you’re thinking there’s another piece to the JMU side of this, you’re right. Since such dramatic changes are happening in defense and tempo, it’s worthwhile to look at offense. When we do, this is what comes up:
JMU offensive efficiency, first half of league play: 0.97 ppp
JMU offensive efficiency, second half of league play: 1.02 ppp
Yes, JMU’s playing more slowly these days. But their total scoring hasn’t really changed.
Pick: Over 145.5 (-110). Low confidence.
