Editor’s Note: Over a sample size of 691 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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Three picks today.
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 Basketball
Tennessee State vs. Cal Poly
Tennessee State has impressed on the young season. They’ve continuously climbed in systems like KenPom, passing three or four teams already in their native Ohio Valley Conference.
With teams like this, bettors sometimes start reaching, expecting them to continue to exceed expectations. Sometimes, this is reasonable, such as when an unheralded freshman is making an impact to which systems are slow to adjust, or when a team is outperforming expectations so broadly that it exceeds a system’s limits.
Neither of those things are happening here.
Yes, Tennessee State has a solid crop of freshmen, and yes, they’re getting better, but nothing so unusual is going on here that the best systems aren’t accounting for it. Is it possible they’re better than the systems indicate? Of course. That’s true of every team, though. It’s more likely that between the systems and the bettors, the systems are closer to the truth.
Pick: Cal Poly +7 (-110). Low confidence.
Memphis vs. North Carolina State
Memphis’ offense is obviously not what it could be right now. James Wiseman, the possible first pick in this coming summer’s NBA draft, is not playing. He is missed. The odds are taking this into account.
There’s a funny thing, though, about players like Wiseman. It’s hard to account for them in projection models until the season is well underway unless some large manual adjustment is made, which includes a deal of risk. Because of this, it’s possible projections are still undervaluing even a Wiseman-less Memphis’ ability to score points, or at the very least evaluating that offense accurately.
In the three games Wiseman has missed, Memphis has outperformed their expected points per possession twice. On the aggregate, they’ve narrowly outperformed the metric in that timeframe. With the defense presumably also weakened by Wiseman’s absence, given his defensive rebounding and shot-blocking prowess, the over looks good here.
Pick: Over 153.5 (-110). Low confidence.
Wake Forest vs. College of Charleston
Wake Forest was without Chaundee Brown Friday, and figures to be without him again today. Brown has a foot injury, and Danny Manning has cited the Wooden Legacy’s back-to-back games today and tomorrow as a concern even if Brown is cleared for play today.
Still, this line has swung wildly in Charleston’s favor, to the point where Wake Forest would need to be roughly 6.5 points worse per 100 possessions for this to not be one of the day’s best bets. That’s a lot of points, and even then, Wake Forest measures out as the better team—just not by as much.
It’s expected to be a close game. It would have been even were Brown playing. As with all college basketball games, it has the potential to get out of hand in either direction. Overall, though, it’s one of the better plays available on today’s board.
Pick: Wake Forest to win (+120). Low confidence.
College Football
Mississippi @ Mississippi State
There isn’t a lot to say about this one. Both teams are close to the FBS average on the season. Mississippi State’s a little better. Mississippi State’s playing at home.
There’s a little bit of doubt injected because Mississippi, for all its flaws, has run the ball fairly efficiently on the year, and Mississippi State has struggled to stop the run. Still, the Bulldogs are better, and they’re playing at home, and it’s more likely that the “anything can happen in the Egg Bowl” narrative is more responsible for the skewed line than any particular matchup.
Pick: Mississippi State -1.5 (-110). Low confidence.
