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 mixed, with an average return on investment, per pick, of -4% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 2,289 published picks, not including bets that remain pending, like futures. That is, of course, unprofitable, and while our projections do indicate we’ll get back to even or profitable by the beginning of November (we have a strong history on MLB futures), or possibly by the end of next week (we have a lot of units down on Washington State to win the NIT, and how the hedging situation shakes out with that is unclear), we want to be transparent with you here.
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.
No futures today (our primary interest there is for Houston to beat Arizona, and after that it’s a bunch of if-this-then-that’s between the other three games, which we’ll get into below), but one pick on each game tonight. Kind of.
Parlay: Thursday Night Sweet Sixteen Games
This one’s weird. We actually don’t recommend it at these odds—the technical Vegas consensus odds—but with a lot of variation on the Gonzaga moneyline, there’s a chance you can get it at +574 or better, at which point we’d say to take it. There’s a little value on Gonzaga at -455 or better (we took the Zags on something like that earlier this week in our futures plays), but that’ll be hard to find. If you want value on a bet involving that game, you’ll have to rope something else in.
Pick: Gonzaga, Villanova, Texas Tech, and Houston to win +559. Low confidence.
Villanova vs. Michigan
The narrative hasn’t really come around to just how bad Michigan’s defense is this year. It isn’t much better than Purdue’s. That’s part of why Michigan’s struggled as much as it has—their offense is not as good as Purdue’s. Against Villanova’s soft interior, look for Hunter Dickinson to get buckets, and look for Villanova to pour it in from deep, as they’re prone to doing. Slow game, but an efficient game.
Pick: Over 135 (-115). Medium confidence.
Duke vs. Texas Tech
Texas Tech’s the better team here. Narrowly, yes, but by enough. We saw something like this last night in the NIT, where Wake Forest was completely not equipped to handle Texas A&M’s pressure. Duke’s better with the ball than Wake Forest, but they too have not seen a defense like this one. Might the refs get involved? Yes. They probably will. That’s part of the unpredictability of this whole thing. But we don’t really know in what direction, and the best bet as far as they go is that they start throwing out a whole bunch of makeup calls if the foul count gets lopsided, which could actually favor Texas Tech in the end. In other words, don’t worry too much about the refs. Take the better team.
Pick: Texas Tech to win -110. Medium confidence.
Arizona vs. Houston
Here, too, Houston might be the better team. Might. Kerr Kriisa’s injury is enough to call it into question, but KenPom’s been too high on the Cougars in the past, so we want to be careful on that. Arizona has issues on the defensive glass. TCU exposed those, but they were always there. Surely, they’ve spent the last three days trying to work on it, but it’s hard to fix something that fundamental overnight, and they also have issues protecting the ball. Kriisa played 27 minutes Sunday night on a bum ankle and still had a sub-even assist-to-turnover ratio. That was against TCU, who doesn’t force many turnovers. Against Houston, Justin Kier is going to need to play a huge role, and Houston might still beat him up. Every matchup in this game besides free throws favors the Cougars.
Pick: Houston to win +103. Medium confidence.
***
Alright, the future situation tonight. Based on our 10,000 daily simulations (run hot), here’s where things fall with each of the 16 possible combinations of winners this evening:
probability = probability of this combination of winners; mean and median are profit/loss
| Winners | Profit Probability | Probability | Mean | Median |
| AMDH | 69% | 1.5% | 75.03 | 87.00 |
| GMTH | 64% | 6.6% | 41.85 | 23.10 |
| GVDH | 63% | 13.8% | 44.24 | 33.10 |
| GMDH | 62% | 5.8% | 49.38 | 33.10 |
| GVTH | 62% | 15.1% | 44.14 | 33.10 |
| AVDH | 57% | 3.2% | 36.75 | 45.00 |
| AVTH | 56% | 3.5% | 39.79 | 21.00 |
| AMTH | 49% | 1.4% | 31.71 | -2.00 |
| AVDAz | 45% | 3.0% | -1.91 | -25.00 |
| GVDAz | 43% | 12.7% | -3.98 | -20.40 |
| GVTAz | 42% | 15.0% | -15.66 | -24.90 |
| GMTAz | 41% | 7.0% | -16.84 | -24.90 |
| GMDAz | 41% | 5.5% | -9.03 | -24.90 |
| AVTAz | 39% | 3.5% | -18.87 | -50.00 |
| AMTAz | 36% | 1.4% | -23.41 | -50.00 |
| AMDAz | 35% | 1.2% | -37.96 | -78.00 |
So, we’re probably leaning towards Gonzaga and Villanova in the first two games, and then based on the outcomes of those, we want Texas Tech to beat Duke if Gonzaga and Michigan have won and Duke to beat Texas Tech in all other situations. But Duke and Texas Tech are fairly similar for us overall, and the gaps between our Gonzaga/Arkansas and Villanova/Michigan scenarios aren’t too large either. It’s really a one-game show, and it’s a big show at that.
