Editor’s Note: Over a sample size of 726 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 11% 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 today in 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.
Marshall @ Toledo
Toledo is good. Very good, by conventional MAC standards. With Buffalo returning to Earth, the Rockets are the conference favorite, making the NCAA Tournament in roughly 32% of our model’s (LINK) simulations.
Marshall is not very good. They’re one of the bottom teams in Conference USA, a far cry from last year’s CIT champions.
It’s a large line, but with Toledo at home, Marshall’s poor three-point defense, Toledo’s ability to deal with fast-paced opponents (Valparaiso is no Marshall in terms of tempo, but few are), and Toledo’s unwillingness to yield easy buckets, it’s not large enough.
Pick: Toledo -11 (-110). Low confidence.
Northwestern State @ LSU
The risk here are LSU holding Northwestern State to something like 50 points, LSU resting its offensive weapons for virtually the entire game, and LSU easing up at the end. The first and last are the more significant of the two, given that LSU’s reserves could beat Northwestern State by a healthy margin without any help from the starting five.
Pick: Over 147.5 (-110). Low confidence.
Denver @ UCLA
Denver is a bad team, below the 300-line in KenPom. UCLA, though, is below the 100-line themselves, and while they should score at will inside the arc, getting to a 20-point margin is mildly unlikely.
Pick: Denver +19 (-110). Low confidence.
