Editor’s Note: For more than two years now, Joe has been publishing picks here and back at All Things NIT, our former site. There have been moments of elation (the Nationals winning the 2019 World Series, the first two months of the 2019-20 college basketball season). There have been moments of frustration (the Dodgers’ 2020 NLCS comeback, the second two months of the 2019-20 college basketball season). Overall, the results have been positive, with an average return on investment, per pick, of 1.3% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 1,322 published picks, not including pending futures. And while 1.3% might not be enormous, it’s positive over a big sample size. For what it’s worth.
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. Ken Pomeroy’s KenPom is heavily used in making College Basketball picks.
Alabama vs. UCLA
Alabama should win this, especially if they have a good shooting day. And Alabama should have success stopping Johnny Juzang, given they have, per KenPom, the third-best defense in the country and it isn’t one-dimensional. But UCLA’s favored to cover here even with median Juzang, there’s reason to believe median Juzang is worse than current Juzang, and current Juzang is at a level for which there isn’t a stress-test. Defending him is like going to the moon: You can design a great plan, but there’s no way to try it out before it needs to work.
Pick: UCLA +6.5 (-110). Low confidence.
USC vs. Oregon
Lost in the Pac-12’s outrageous week and a half is that USC looked like the second-best team in the country when they beat Kansas (yes, you could say they looked like the best team in the country, but Gonzaga hasn’t gotten a chance to play a team as good as USC was that night, and saying anyone looks better than Gonzaga is foolish, as Illinois so emphatically proved). Also lost is that USC’s better than Oregon. Not by enough to be a big favorite spread-wise. But by enough to be a bigger favorite than this.
Pick: USC -2 (-110). Low confidence.
