Editor’s Note: For a little more than three years now, Joe has been publishing picks here and back at All Things NIT, our former site. Overall, the results have been positive, with an average return on investment, per pick, of 0.5% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 2,012 published picks, not including bets that remain pending, like futures. 0.5% doesn’t sound amazing, but you’re not going to find much better on the internet with this large a non-selective sample.
Use these picks at your own risk. Only you are responsible for any money you lose, and you should not bet more than you can afford to lose. If you have a gambling problem, get help.
Lines for these come from the Vegas consensus or the closest approximation available at the time picks are written, unless otherwise noted. KenPom is heavily used in making college basketball picks.
We are doing something risky here. I’m not sure it’s smart. But all betting involves risks, and we’ve at least done some math on this.
Eleven Daytona 500 picks (college basketball below this):
Daytona 500
We’re short on time, but the basic idea here is this: We looked at the frequency with which cars crash at Daytona (roughly 33% of cars crash out of each race there), then assigned probabilities of each car remaining running at the end of the race (based on the team’s historic ability to keep cars running, independent of crashes). Then, we looked at drivers’ ability to finish in the top five in superspeedways, took the nine with positive eROI’s, and added Wallace and Hamlin because they were close enough that our probable overweighting of improbable drivers was likely holding them below the line. Overall, we’ve got close to a 50% shot, by our own math, of having picked the winner. We’ll see. It’s a rather random event. Michael McDowell won last year. Austin Dillon won in 2018. Kurt Busch won in the 41 back in 2017. Trevor Bayne won in 2011.
In other words, these all probably can happen. We’re hoping one of them will.
Pick: Denny Hamlin to win +850. Low confidence.
Pick: Bubba Wallace to win +2000. Low confidence.
Pick: Aric Almirola to win +2200. Low confidence.
Pick: Christopher Bell to win +2500. Low confidence.
Pick: Ricky Stenhouse Jr. to win +2500. Low confidence.
Pick: Cole Custer +5000. Low confidence.
Pick: Erik Jones to win +5000. Low confidence.
Pick: Michael McDowell to win +6000. Low confidence.
Pick: Corey LaJoie to win +10000. Low confidence.
Pick: David Ragan to win +10000. Low confidence.
Marquette @ Creighton
In more comfortable territory, we’ve got a tossup in the Big East. Creighton’s interior defense should be the difference.
Pick: Creighton -1 (-110). Low confidence.
