“If we handle the ball like that, (Ohio State) can pick the score,” Self said. “Let’s just call it like it is. They will pick the score in our own building if we handle the ball like that…It will be a jailbreak if we turn the ball over against Ohio State. They won’t just be running out and scoring two points. They will be making plays that are ESPN top-10 plays.”  Quote ESPN college basketball blog.

There is no line yet.

UPDATE

Line: Ohio St (-3) @ Kansas.  I know nothing about college basketball at this moment in 2011, but I will be taking Ohio St here.  Let’s see what happens. 

Magic +131

How things stand at the moment going to Game 6 in Atlanta.  Didn’t catch the line on this going into last night but it couldn’t have been too different than this since Orlando played at home for Game 5.  But that means that Atlanta would have only been like a 2:1 favorite to win this series up 3-1?  Strikes me as odd, I’m guessing no one and their deceased brother must be putting money on the Hawks in this series.

Champions League Finals – Barca vs Man U – Straight up Bet 50

I need the finals of the Champions League to be Barcelona vs Man U.  Any other Finals Match-up (i.e. Man U v Real) and Loubaka wins.  The obvious thing to hate about this bet is that it is betting on the expected, and how often does that happen?

Houston Astros worst record in baseball – Laying 3.5:1 – 30 Dollar Bet

This is the bet that refused to die.  Bet was only consummated after Houston had its only (still the case!) winning streak of the season, two in a row against the Mets.  At this moment Houston is half a game better than Seattle and has the same record as San Diego and the White Sox.

Miami Heat – -10 the pinnacle line on playoff series until eliminated – 20 Dollar Bet each series

Confused by the language on this?  Join the club.  If there is one activity I enjoy doing, it is drinking while making complicated bets against the Miami Heat.  I think this means that if Miami is -120 to win a series, JaPan gets Miami at -130 with me as the house.  I’ll clarify, or try to get JaPan to make a miraclecameo to the web site to clear things up.

10 Units – Ohio St -6

http://www.twitter.com/seanismoney

Follow me there for daily bets, quips, and intelligent thoughts that are 160 characters or less.

I’ve been doing well this year, batting .695 for the year.  I was at .775, but I’ve been miracle covered the last few weeks (including The Debacle on a Thursday Night in Tennessee when the Titans scored a TD with NO time left to lose 30-28…….the last drive of that game deserves a column on its own).

Today’s tease: Miami Heat +7 and the Over for the Dallas/Cardinals game 39.   I finally have a reason to root for The Douche 3, as nothing trumps my disdain more for Lebron, than the Lakers.

I also took the Ravens @ -3.5 on Monday; I just don’t see them losing this game with so much on the line.  I’ll have more thoughts going into this Sunday about the Packers, and the Jets, who considering how there season has gone along with the foot-fetish news with Rex Ryan, are fans of the agony of victory, and the THRILL of defeat.

On a final note, I got some new games for the XBOX 360 today.   Just played some capture the flag with Chad Ochocinco on Call of Duty: Black Ops.

And as you all know, I have a great love for sports games, so I am really excited to start a season in this title below later:

WNBA Live

1. Home teams were 3-3
2. Ranked or higher ranked teams were 0-1
3. Favorites and underdogs were 3-3

Home, away, favorite, underdog, all end up being at .500 ATS throughout this project, which means Vegas is batting 1.000.

For those who are interested in riding the hot streak the link is this.

I am slightly confused at the layout, they offer two sets of picks, one using “Decision Tree” model and one using “Similar Games” model and I haven’t looked into things enough to figure exactly what the hell they are talking about but me and V used the Decision Tree model last night, and if you go with that you’ll be taking Wash St tonight.  Take that for what it’s worth.

Second, there a chance this site has subscribers.  Recently there was a comment from “Paul.”  Paul notes…

“I’ve been reading this website for a little while now and I think that (Pat’s) cockiness is getting the better of (him). Maybe (Pat) should take it down a notch.”

That’s right, it’s ffffffffffffFFFFFFFFFFAAAAAAANNNNN MAIL!

How do you even find this site?  This is exciting!  Paul’s problem with me is based on his idea that through this Project I am trying to show I have more savvy than Vegas.  But the real main issue with the College Basketball thing is just trying to keep myself current.  If it wasn’t for this thing I wouldn’t know that Marist is just as horrible this year as they were last year, 0 wins in real life and ATS.  Let’s see how Vegas did last night…Murray St 74 E Kentucky 72, Arizona St 54 Baylor 68, Rider 88 Manhattan 59, Mercer 67 Belmont 89, UCLA 76 Kansas 77, Oral Roberts 71 Western Illinois 58.  Looking back I think I messed up and there wasn’t a spread on the Mercer Belmont game.  I’ll update the stats and such if I was wrong.  With what we got, ATS…

1. Home teams were 2-3
2. Ranked or ranked higher teams were 1-1
3. Favorites were 3-2

Moving forward…

1. Portland (+3.5) @ Montana
2. Niagra (-6.5) @ Marist
3. North Dakota (+10) @ Idaho
4. UAB (+3) @ Georgia
5. Canisus (+8.5) @ Iona
6. St Joseph’s (+19) @ Villanova

1. Home teams were 3-2
2. Ranked or ranked higher teams were 2-0
3. Favorites and underdogs were 3-3

So Vegas was pretty spot on, no surprise there.  Let’s keep the train rolling.

1. Murray St (-4) @ E Kentucky
2. Arizona St (+9.5) @ Baylor
3. Rider (-5.5) @ Manhattan
4. Mercer @ Belmont
5. UCLA (17.5) @ Kansas
6. Oral Roberts (-6.5) @ Western Illinois

And as a special note I stumbled across a web site that gives out free picks on college basketball games that they throw into something I like to picture as being essentially equivalent to the Matrix and what got spit out as their number one confidence pick for tonight is…Samford as a home pick em against W Carolina.  Sure you might be only slightly certain that the W in W Carolina stands for Western, but that doesn’t matter.  Let’s see what this Matrix machine is capable of, I got 15 bucks on it.

1. Yale (+24.5) @ Illinois
2. New Mexico St (+10) @ UTEP
3. No. Colorado (+6.5) @ Santa Clara
4. Washington (-3.5) N Kentucky
5. Georgia Southern (+22) @ Texas Tech
6. UC Davis (+1) @ Sacramento St

Heat – No best reg record or no win championship (300)

The only people that actually read this site know this story already but I originally had a 100 dollar bet on this with JaPan.  Straight up, he wins if the Heat finish with best overall and win the Championship.  After Game 1 where the Heat got smoked by the Celtics I offered him to settle for 75 on the spot and yada, yada, yada, we now have 300 dollars on the line.  I would probably be posting this even if the Heat weren’t struggling, but the fact they lost to Indiana last night at home is the ultimate typing catalyst.  Don’t want to jinx this but this looks promising to say the least.

Jets (or Bills) to win AFC East vs Patriots (40)

Another Japan bet.  The bet was made either directly after the first Jets/Pats or after the Jets/Broncos, I’m pretty sure it was the former.  Needless to say booze has made the issue murky.  At this point you have to give the Patriots the odds on this due to the schedule and that the Jets go to Foxboro two Monday nights from now.  I like JaPan’s chances.  As a side not I insisted that I get the Bills also in the bet.

Over/Under Season Win Total Bets – Pub Crawl

In case you were wondering about the baseball O/U pub crawl bet this year I smoked Lou Lou.  This one looks promising for Louis but it’s close.  I’ll edit this section when I have the numbers in front of me.

Chicago Bears to Win One Game for Remainder of Season

This is not an actual bet at the moment but one Lou Lou proposed Sunday night.  He posed the question, what are the chances that the Bears do not win another game the rest of the season?  Looking at the schedule, the Bears from here in will be an underdog in most games with a couple of essential coin-flips thrown in.  Louis originally wanted 10-1 odds, which I accepted.  Weary that I accepted so quickly he then graciously and generously offered himself something like 18-1.  Currently we are in a stalemate, I’ll lay 12-1 but Lou Lou is holding out for 15-1.  I think this one is going to die on the table.  The only hope of action is that this is a bet that has to be made in a non-internet setting since the line doesn’t exist in real life.  We’ll see.

Judging Allen’s picks.  I’m not going to do this often, but I feel like doing this now.

College -  The first games were solid.  I didnt see the St Johns or VCU games but both teams easily covered his teasers and picking St Johns on the road against an established program like St Marys is impressive.  Taking Baylor and s illinois looks like a case of being half awake and being too lazy to look into things and taking a couple of home favorites against seemingly weak programs.

Pros – Passing judgement on these is going to be made super easy by the fact that the games have already happened and Capt Hindsight is the one evaluating the picks.  With that said, I really like the OKC pick.  I actually went to a site to make sure Allen hadn’t made a typo and it was OKC -6 which would have seemed more accurate to me.  And obviously, Capt Hindsight is not a fan of the Clippers pick but I can say what I had said to Van yesterday.  The fact that the Clippers lost (in overtime albeit) to the Pistons at home the other night should be a red light indicator that the Clippers are not playing well at all right now.  Just throwing that out there.

Hopefully me being judgemental of Allen’s picks will not halt the relative avalanche of posts Allen has been putting up since getting on the site.  Please scrutinize the shit out of the picks I’ll be putting up.

Now, if you know me, you would be very familiar with the fact that I sabotage all good picks with unnecessary, ridiculous ties to parlays and teasers. So here’s how I’ll ruin this one:
1. Tribe- +23, St Johns +11, VCU -5.5…Why, you ask? First, St Johns. Four words: Steve Lavin, ten seniors. St Mary’s better muster up all that magic from last season, and hope that the bongs were put down 3 months ago instead of 3 weeks ago. Second, VCU. VCU has consistently been a competitive mid major. I see no reasons why this won’t continue. Winthrop, however, I think is a far cry from the team that made a NCAA run several years ago. They opened this year with an unimpressive win over Queens, NC. Seriously, I’m not sure if this was a rec team, tech school, or a legitimate college bball team. I’ve lived in NC and never heard of Queens. I think it may be in Charlotte but I’m not sure. Either way, VCU should win fairly easily. The lines listed above reflect a -130 7 pt teaser. I also took Tribe +20, St Johns +8, and VCU -8.5 in a risk 40 to win 72.

Cornell (+8.5) “@” Kentucky

So apparently whoever the higher seed is, is labeled the home team.  This Cornell line is interesting.  I actually think it is very accurate, but what makes me like Cornell here is that I feel they have a much higher chance of winning than most 8 to 9 point underdogs.  For instance, Purdue is an eight point underdog and I don’t think they have a prayer of beating Duke.

Butler (+6) “@” Syracuse

I think this line is a bit low, it is a continuation of what seems like a season-long trend of over-valuing Butler and under-valuing Syracuse.  I would personally have this at a whisker under double digits.

Xavier “@” Kansas State (under 154)

I am basing this entirely on a four second blurb I saw the other day on one of the networks where a commentator said Kansas St defense was awesome but he wasn’t sure where they were going to get points from in subsequent rounds.  That, combined with a pretty hefty number of 154 makes me like the under.  That is my entire reasoning.

Northern Iowa (+1) “@” Michigan St

I have Michigan St in the final four of my brackets so they damn well better beat these guys.  I know Lucas is out, but the Mich St offense was scoring (when they could shoot the ball) just fine the other day without him.  The thing that makes me nervous is that in the final minutes of the Maryland game, Maryland would trap and Mich St had no answers.  In fact I watched a replay of the game and if you watch, Maryland takes the trap off when they go ahead by one with like 38 seconds to go.  I know hindsight is easy, but they should NEVER have taken the full-court pressure off.  Mich St would have been toast.  Instead, the Spartans go down and score on their next two possessions with no trap to beat.  With that being said, this is why they pay Tom Izzo the big bucks.  It’s up to him to prepare a makeshift game plan.  A team without a point guard is a shell of itself (see Texas), but Izzo is one of a very select group of coaches who I feel can figure something out.

Purdue (+8) “@” Duke

This game could be an absolute blowout in my opinion.  If Duke is suspect, Purdue is that to the nth degree with Hummel out.  This game continues Duke’s stroll.

Two stories today:

From The Daily Fix:

What makes the Big East’s start so poor is that the selection committee gave top-three seeds to five of its teams, suggesting that those five should have been good bets to reach the Sweet 16. That makes the 6-6 record even worse than if the eight teams all had mediocre seeds.

Overall, the Big East’s seeds could have been expected to collect 6.5 first-round wins and 3.9 berths in the Sweet 16. Instead they collected four and two, respectively, for letdowns of -2.5 and -1.9 — or 39% and 49%, respectively. In absolute terms, the Big East was by far the most disappointing conference. The SEC’s four representatives won two first-round games, compared to an expected 2.9 — but those two winners, Kentucky and Tennessee, also won in the second round to exceed overall expectations for the conference. And the Big 12 had two Sweet 16 teams, compared to an expectation of 2.9, but did outperform slightly in the first round, with five wins compared to an expectation of 4.9. In percentage terms, Conference USA and the Western Athletic Conference were worse, with neither league having a single tournament win, but neither could have been expected to have a Sweet 16 entrant.

Notes from the NCAA Hoops Head Coach Meat Market (Sports Economist)

Welcome to the sausage making factory, hoops fans. Former St. John’s coach Norm Roberts was unable to sign big name recruits from the Big Apple. Why? He played by the rules. Some of the quotes in this article are shocking. “You got to hustle here, bend some rules or do something…” Russel Smith, a coach with the New York Gauchos, a prominent NYC AAU team. “At St. John’s, they’re not getting certain types of players because they’re doing things the right way.” Kenny Wilcox, head coach at a junior college in Brooklyn.

It’s also worth noting that 12-seed Cornell (+9 versus Kentucky Thursday) absolutely shredded two of the better defenses in the country in Temple and Wisconsin over the weekend. Cornell is the top 3-point shooting team in the country, but unlike other top 3-point teams Utah St. and BYU haven’t hit a dry spell yet. Kentucky has a very good defense and Cornell will need to rebound and continue to shoot well to have a chance.

Just got going on MLB season win totals, hope to have those up in the next week or so as the NCAAs (and NIT) are winding down.

Lastly, the Onions Award for the 2010 tournament will be given for this shot, and I can’t think of any circumstance that would cause me to change my mind.

There are two schools of thought on being tested by a lesser opponent early in the tourney. The optimistic view is that a close game like that serves as a useful wake-up call, and that most teams play such a close game somewhere along their NCAA Tournament path. The pessimistic perspective is that struggling in the early rounds reveals weaknesses that better teams can take full advantage of in later rounds.

Can we learn anything about these situations from the numbers? Using the incredible new treasure trove of NCAA history offered by sports-reference.com, I went through the last 10 NCAA Tournaments to find examples of top-three seeds playing games decided by five points or fewer in the first round. In that span, no No. 1 seed has gotten such a serious scare from a 16, but five No. 2 seeds have eked out victories and nine No. 3 seeds have won by five points or fewer.

The second seeds who were tested in the first round indeed struggled the next time out, going just 2-3. By comparison, No. 2 seeds who were more dominant in their opening-round wins won 58.8 percent of the time. (One oddity from these numbers: Third seeds were more successful in the second round overall than second seeds over the past decade. In 2000, three of the four No. 2 seeds failed to reach the Sweet Sixteen.)

At the same time, third seeds saw little to no carry-over. They went 7-2 in second-round games, which is better than their peers who got off to a better start.

Official color commentator of Miracle Covers Bill Raftery was the subject of a recent SI article. He had the quote of round one telling America that Scottie Reynolds, “stroked it admirably today,” and causing anyone who was playing the Bill Raftery Drinking Game to take a sip. Unofficial onion count : 1

“He’s the only person I know who can say, ‘F— you’ and make you think it’s a compliment,”

Projected Conference Win Totals

I definitely didn’t expect it, but the Big East under certainly looks appealing. Unsure probability wise how 1.5 wins stacks up with the +115 on the under (Needs to hit 47% to break even), but it’s about as anti-public as you can get.

EDIT: After some feedback from a couple of people, I re-ran these numbers using the Pomeroy projections and this morning’s changed lines. MUCH better.

There have been some attempts to try and predict teams by using the number of minutes returning and then a variable to represent the quality of freshmen, but I’m not aware of anything that’s actually worked and worked well. See Texas on this year’s list as a perfect example. They were winning unimpressively (and not covering) before finally starting to lose games when 2010 rolled around.

The tom and bottom teams on this list are always going to be the ones most over/under valued by the general gambling public. Finding & betting on these teams before they get all popular is kind of the idea.

For example, anyone who was paying attention to Notre Dame basketball noticed their sudden transition into a slower paced team in February.

“I went to sleep that night and just thought, ‘We’ve got to do something different,’’ Brey said of his Solomon-inspired epiphany. “We’ve had burn – where we run the clock in the final four minutes – in our playbook forever. So I just told the guys, ‘We’re going to extend burn to 40 minutes.’’

The burn has scorched opponents. Since Brey put the brakes on the usually run and gun, up and down Irish, Notre Dame has ripped off five wins in a row and gone from not being in the NCAA Tournament conversation to playing for a seed. The Irish defeated Seton Hall 68-56 Wednesday night.

Notre Dame lost by a basket against West Virginia in the Big East semis, ending their six game win streak, but every since their 91-89 loss to Louisville has hit the under.

John Gasaway from Basketball Prospectus added this bit of goodness:

Notre Dame defense, first 14 Big East games vs. last five
Pace: possessions per 40 minutes; Opp. PPP: opponent points per possession

Pace Opp. PPP
First 14 65.8 1.13
Last five 56.9 0.97

Speaking of transformations, this is not a matter of a coach simply taking his foot off the accelerator. More like yanking the emergency brake so hard it flew off. Notre Dame is now locked in a pace cage match to the death with Wisconsin and Arizona State for the title of slowest late-season major-conference team.

Why is the Irish D so much better all the sudden? Partly it’s because in their sassy new Big Ten look ND has improved noticeably on the defensive glass while committing fewer fouls. (Again, feel free to draw a Wisconsin parallel.) But far and away the largest single before-and-after difference here is opponents’ threes. They used to go in (over the first 14 Big East games) 37 percent of the time. Now (last five games) they go in just 24 percent of the time.

Interestingly, everything else has stayed the same, even at the dramatically slower pace. Just like before, teams playing Notre Dame never turn the ball over and, indeed, opponent two-point percentage has actually gone up a hair. It pretty much all comes down to the threes.

Certainly I can envisage the Irish playing better and more locked-in perimeter D in games this slow, just like it makes sense that more minutes for a 6-7 athlete like Carleton Scott would have an impact.

It took bookmakers three full games to even have a hint as to what was going on, and it wasn’t until after the fifth game against notoriously uptempo Seton Hall that the lines even started getting adjusted. And Notre Dame has still been smashing the under which means the lines still weren’t right. Here’s the list:

The Irish play Old Dominion in an early game Thursday and the line is currently 122. Old Dominion plays at a similar tempo to UND’s last two opponents Pittsburgh and West Virginia. It’s worth a look if not a play. Of course, those that actually watched the games over the last few weeks (hint: not me) and took action already should be sitting on enough cash to make this play.

One last bit of reading material to recommend for bracket selections: Seth Davis, who you’ll see on TV a lot over the next three weeks, called a bunch of coaches and asked them for their off-the-record thoughts on a bunch of teams in this year’s field. The insights are very telling. I’ll quote my favorite below and then tell you to read HERE and HERE.

KENTUCKY: The main question with them is obviously their inexperience. Regardless of what people say, freshmen are freshmen, and all it takes is one freshman moment in a single-elimination tournament to end your season. The second thing is their perimeter shooting. Statistically their percentages are respectable, but their volume of outside shots is not high. Nobody gets up and down the floor like John Wall, but when you get into the tournament, the pace tends to slow down. Teams that are averaging 75 points a game are going to get 70 or fewer. If people put a premium on possessions, they are going to have to make perimeter shots. DeMarcus Cousins’ emergence offensively has taken the focal point off of Wall, and to [John] Calipari’s credit they’re going more inside-out. Against Wall, you have to change your looks and try to get him confused, and he will turn it over by trying to go too fast. Then at the end of a shot clock, you have to make him make jump shots. There is no doubt Cousins is the best post player in college basketball. He’s a load on the block, and it’s incredible he gets one of every four shots taken off the offensive glass. [Patrick] Patterson is almost an afterthought, but he hit the big three against Vanderbilt, so you know he’s going to make big plays.

Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/seth_davis/02/22/hoop.thoughts/1.html