Editor’s Note: Since November 2018, 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 -1.6% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 4,377 published picks, not including pending futures, and an average return on investment, per pick, of +2.9% across 1,602 completed high and medium-confidence picks (low confidence picks, these days, are in experimental markets for us).
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. For futures bets (in both sports and politics) and motorsports bets, odds are taken from the better option between Bovada and BetOnline as our best approximation of the Vegas consensus, which isn’t currently/accurately available online. KenPom is heavily used in making college basketball picks. FiveThirtyEight’s SPI is heavily used in making soccer futures picks. ESPN’s FPI is heavily used in making NFL futures picks.
Our college basketball pair for the day:
Evansville @ UCF
UCF had a bad start to the year, losing that buy game against UNC-Asheville. Since then, though, they’ve won four straight, and beating Florida State, Oklahoma State, and Santa Clara isn’t a bad little list. Not sure what’s going on here, but not seeing any injury news, so we’ll roll with it.
Pick: UCF -15.5 (-114). Low confidence.
Tennessee vs. Butler
Is this line about Tennessee, or is it about Butler? If it’s about Tennessee, yes, the loss to Colorado was bad. But was it this bad? To be single-digit favorites against a team that still might not end up on the bubble? And with the Butler side, they did lose that game against Penn State. They’ve been overperforming, but not to some invincible degree.
Pick: Tennessee -7.5 (-104). Low confidence.
