Editor’s Note: Over a sample size of 675 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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Four picks today across college football and college basketball.
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.
College Football
Georgia Southern @ Arkansas State
It would take an unlikely confluence of events for Arkansas State to get a shot at a Sun Belt title. The Red Wolves sit one game back of Louisiana-Lafayette with two games to play, having already lost the head-to-head. But while a conference championship is probably not on the table today, Arkansas State has something significant to play for: the Sun Belt has only five bowl tie-ins, and while the conference only has five teams bowl eligible so far, three more could conceivably make the cut. In other words, Arkansas State winning would nearly guarantee them a trip to a bowl game, something far from insignificant for this program.
Georgia Southern, contrarily, does have a shot at the Sun Belt title game. They’ve got the head-to-head advantage over Appalachian State, so if the Mountaineers stumble in one of their final two games, Georgia Southern could grab the East Division title.
Georgia Southern’s offense is going to be a problem for an Arkansas State defense that struggles against the run. Arkansas State, however, has been successful moving the ball through the air: they rank first in the Sun Belt in yards per pass attempt, and throw the ball more frequently than about three quarters of FBS teams. Georgia Southern’s pass defense isn’t as bad as Arkansas State’s rush defense, but Arkansas State’s offense isn’t as one-dimensional as Georgia Southern’s unit. Overall, Arkansas State might be the better team, even were the game on a neutral field. It’s not on a neutral field, though. It’s in Jonesboro, home of the Red Wolves.
Pick: Arkansas State -1 (-110). Low confidence.
Oregon State @ Washington State
Lost in the letdown that has been Washington State football this year is the fact that as of late, under the cover of deserved media darkness, the Cougars have been playing much better. They’ve impressed in three of their last four contests, handling Colorado and Stanford soundly at home and nearly upsetting Oregon in Eugene. In between those results, they did lay an egg down in Berkeley, but for all their flaws, they should put up a lot of points against Oregon State’s pass defense, one of the worst in the Power Five.
Oregon State, of course, is not what they’ve been recently. They enter the game 5-5, needing a victory tonight or next week, when they play the Ducks, to make the program’s first bowl game since 2013.
A win would also mean a bowl berth for the 5-5 Cougars, who have the Apple Cup awaiting next weekend. Expect them to get that win tonight, and to do it with some points to spare.
Pick: Washington State -10.5 (-110). Low confidence.
Washington @ Colorado
Washington’s struggles this season are perplexing. They’re likely the best 6-4 team in the country, a well-rounded team that ranks in the top 23 of SP+’s offensive, defensive, special teams, and overall ratings. They’ve also lost to both Stanford and Cal (in addition to Oregon and Utah by a combined nine points).
Colorado has had a lot of trouble stopping teams from moving the ball through the air this season. With sunshine and a high in the mid-50’s today, the snowfall from last night should be gone before Washington’s offense takes the field, which goes to say that if pictures of Folsom Field covered in snow are what’s keeping this total down, those should be disregarded. Expect Washington to score and score often. Expect Colorado to score just enough to get this total past the line.
Pick: Over 53 (-110). Low confidence.
College Basketball
Iona vs. Kennesaw State
Kennesaw State has a new coach this year: Amir Abdur-Rahim. When a program with as little attention paid to it as Kennesaw State gets a new coach, and that coach has yet to head coach at a Division I school, tempo predictions revert to the median. This can create an inefficiency, which appears to be what’s happening here. Kennesaw State’s overall tempo numbers are on the fast side of conventional: 72.5 possessions per game. Their offensive average possession length (APL), though (thanks, KenPom), is among the slowest quartile in Division I basketball, while their defensive APL is the seventh-fastest.
Some of this may be a facet of Kennesaw State being very susceptible to fast break points, but that should be a rather insignificant change. Last season, no team ranked at or below where Kennesaw State is in offensive APL had an adjusted tempo at or above the median. The Owls’ overall tempo numbers are going to regress.
Another possible inefficiency is the fact that Kennesaw State’s offense has yet to manage more than 0.83 points per possession in a game. For them to hit the 68 points they need for this total to hit the over (assuming a perfectly correct spread), the game would have to reach 82 possessions even with them matching their season-best performance. Match the 0.88 points per possession KenPom would expect them to score against an average defense, that number’s 77 possessions. Account for Iona’s below-average defense, and the number gets to a more reasonable 72, but that would still require Kennesaw State to score 0.95 points per possession: significantly more than they’ve scored at any point this season, even having played a defense as poor as that of Mercer’s, with an adjusted efficiency more than a point worse than that of Iona.
A lot has to go right for this over to hit. Don’t expect it to.
Pick: Under 147.5 (-110). Low confidence.
