Today’s Best Bets: Sunday, January 15th

Editor’s Note: Since November 2018, Joe has been publishing picks here and back at All Things NIT, our former site. Overall, the results have been mixed, with an average return on investment, per pick, of -1% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 4,599 published picks, not including pending futures, and an average return on investment, per pick, of +3% across 1,605 completed high and medium-confidence picks (low confidence picks, these days, are in experimental markets for us).

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’re afraid you might have a gambling problem, seek help.

Odds for these come the better option between Bovada and BetOnline. We used to use the Vegas Consensus, but it’s no longer consistently available in an accurate form online. KenPom is used in making college basketball picks. FiveThirtyEight’s SPI is heavily used in making soccer futures picks. ESPN’s FPI is heavily used in making NFL futures picks.

Northwestern @ Michigan

I think the thing here is to not overthink it, and while you could say Michigan’s broken right now because of how badly they fell apart at the end of the Iowa game this week, you could also say that Michigan just had a solid road win in its grasp and then weird things happened. I don’t prefer the latter explanation, but even with that, we buy them to cover today.

Pick: Michigan -4.5 (-110). Low confidence.

Marquette @ Xavier

The thing about really high-tempo games, and specifically high-scoring, high-tempo games, is that there should be some stratification that occurs. 1.2 points per possession vs. 1.1 points per possession is a six-point game at 65 possessions but an eight-point game at 80. That’s not the biggest difference, and there’s probably some race-like elements where teams keep up with one another, but scores should, in theory, spread out as games get higher-velocity. We see that happening in a lot of scenarios today.

Pick: Xavier -3.5 (-109). Low confidence.

The Barking Crow's resident numbers man. Was asked to do NIT Bracketology in 2018 and never looked back. Fields inquiries on Twitter: @joestunardi.
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2 thoughts on “Today’s Best Bets: Sunday, January 15th

    1. They’re in the picture, but I don’t think they’ll break through into our projected NIT bracket when we update it tomorrow (haven’t run the numbers yet, so I’m not positive on this). If SJSU and Boise State help them out and they avoid losing to the sub-BYU WCC teams, they’ve got a fringe NCAA Tournament chance. To make the NIT, splitting with BYU might be necessary, and they could still use quality road wins.

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