Editor’s Note: Over a sample size of 642 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 12% 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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Four picks tonight.
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.
College Football
Buffalo @ Kent State
Had a few plays gone differently for Kent State against Ohio, the Miami in Ohio, and Toledo these last three games, this might be a crucial showdown in the MAC East. Instead, Buffalo tries to stay above .500 in conference while Kent State tries to keep its slim bowl hopes alive.
Kent State’s made one bowl game in the last 46 seasons, and it would take winning out for them to do that again this year. That’s unlikely, though, with none of the three remaining games much better than a tossup for the Golden Flashes.
Even so, Kent State figures to at least hang around tonight. Those last three losses have each come by only one possession against teams in similar positions to Buffalo in the standings, and SP+ has the line closer to even than to its current six-point spread.
Pick: Kent State +6 (-115). Low confidence.
College Basketball
Louisiana-Monroe @ Mississippi State
Louisiana-Monroe and Mississippi State figure to both be among college basketball’s slowest teams this season. Mississippi State managed to keep a game with last year’s tempo leader, FIU, to 68 possessions. Even with overtime, ULM’s contest with Alcorn State reached only 73 possessions.
But what tonight figures to lack in tempo it should make up for in offensive efficiency. Louisiana-Monroe is significantly better offensively than they are defensively—while in the latter, they’re in college basketball’s bottom quartile, they’re near the median in the former. Mississippi State, meanwhile, while not an SEC contender, is a competent, well-rounded power conference team. They’ve managed to grab offensive rebounds at an absurd 47.4% rate through two games (that’s part of how they’ve slowed things down), and they’re shooting 62.0% inside the arc.
In short, while this total is smartly making something of the slow pace each team prefers, it’s likely underestimating how many points can be scored in so few possessions.
Pick: Over 132.5 (-110). Low confidence.
Vanderbilt @ Richmond
Last year, after numerous seasons with three or more bids, the Atlantic-10 sent only one team to the NCAA Tournament. Richmond might help make that a one-year trend, though they’re more likely to do so as a second-quartile win for conference opponents than by making it themselves.
Still, the Spiders are justly favored over Vanderbilt, and could be favored by more. Vanderbilt struggled on Monday to hold off Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, a team ranked behind the 300 mark in KenPom’s overall adjusted efficiency. Richmond, though they allowed an unsightly 15 offensive rebounds against the Pennsylvanian St. Francis in their opener, lived up to their billing as an efficient scoring team that figures to move the ball well. Vanderbilt certainly has a shot tonight. It just isn’t a good one.
Pick: Richmond -6 (-110). Low confidence.
Michigan State @ Seton Hall
It feels disrespectful to say anything about the impact of Cassius Winston’s mourning on tonight’s game, given how insignificant all of this is relative to the loss with which he’s coping. Let’s just leave it at: he’s expected to play.
Possibly also playing is Myles Powell, a stud guard for Seton Hall. Powell sprained his ankle in Saturday’s game against Stony Brook, and while initial reports indicated he’d be out a long time, he’s since been upgraded to a game-time decision.
Kevin Willard has said Seton Hall will have to slow it down if Powell is out, which is likely part of why this total is as low as it is. Seton Hall has liked to push the tempo during Powell’s time there, but Michigan State’s annually extremely adept at slowing teams down regardless of how quickly they want to play. Yes, Myles Powell is good enough to have an impact, but the tempo piece of Michigan State games is already well-established, independent of opponent.
The other part is, of course, the potential absence of Powell, which would obviously impose an adverse effect upon the Seton Hall offense. KenPom’s adjusted tempos and efficiencies churn out an expected final score in which Michigan State scores 75. Assuming that isn’t significantly affected in either direction in the event Powell doesn’t play, that means even a Powell-less Seton Hall would only need to score 65 to hit the total on the head. To get an expected value of 65, one has to downgrade Seton Hall’s offensive efficiency from 108 points per possession to 99, a drop that moves them close to college basketball’s median. Even without Powell (and there’s supposedly a chance he plays), it’s hard to believe the Pirates’ offense isn’t significantly better than that median Division I offense.
Pick: Over 140 (-110). Low confidence.
