Editor’s Note: Over a sample size of 717 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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A few picks today, including some college basketball futures.
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.
Future: National Championship
With our college basketball model now live, we can now run futures past it to find inefficiencies in that market.
This isn’t a perfect process. Our model’s error margins are wide enough to create some noise. However, in doing that, we find four teams where the Vegas consensus and our model combine to yield an expected return at or above 50%—a high enough payout to wash away concerns that a team’s high championship probability is leading us astray. Helping matters is the fact that none of these four teams show up much higher in ranked national championship probability than they do in the current KenPom rankings. Combined, they’re only roughly 18% likely to win a national championship, so you’ll want to be diligent if you’re following these and make sure to keep tabs on this space (we’ll try to corner the market, as we were eventually able to do in the MLB this summer and fall).
Overall, though, you could do worse than these four. Ohio State’s likely one of the two best teams in the country. Purdue might be a top-five outfit. Butler might be the best team in the Big East, and Penn State seems to be covered up by the overall top-end strength of the Big Ten. All four are currently undervalued, so get them while you can, or at least get Ohio State. Lastly, as an aside, you might be able to find better odds on one or more of these online (*cough* Penn State *cough*).
Pick: Ohio State to win the national championship (+1700). Low confidence.
Pick: Purdue to win the national championship (+4000). Low confidence.
Pick: Butler to win the national championship (+10000). Low confidence.
Pick: Penn State to win the national championship (+10000). Low confidence.
Elon @ High Point
Elon’s played a brutal schedule to this point, dealing with Michigan and UNC on the road to go with a trip to Georgia Tech and a visit from Furman. They got their first Division I victory Monday night, a 26-point thrashing of Kennesaw State, and bettors seem optimistic.
This might be misguided.
While High Point is certainly not a good team, Elon’s done little to indicate they are. Plenty of teams have blown out Kennesaw State, and while High Point has yet to defeat a Division I opponent, they’ve also played none outside of KenPom’s top 200.
Pick: High Point +4 (-110). Low confidence.
Note: The pick below this line was published later than picks above this line due to our desire to get the first published picks out there before windows closed on High Point and the futures.
Furman @ Auburn
Furman hasn’t cracked sixty in its last two games, and while that’s likely to change against an Auburn team that pushes the pace more than either UT-Arlington or USF, it’s nonetheless a bad sign that the Paladins couldn’t score even 0.90 per possession against two defenses significantly worse than that of Auburn. On the whole, yes, Furman is a better offensive team than they’ve shown these past two outings (they’ve scored 90 or more three times on the year). But will this game hit a 3.7 points per minute pace? It doesn’t look likely, especially with Auburn’s questionable turnover numbers so far on offense against defenses nowhere near as good as Furman at creating takeaways.
Pick: Under 148 (-110). Low confidence.
