
It's a great time, but a crazy time, for sports fans, with more than 100 college basketball games on the Saturday slate, the NBA in full swing and the NFL Playoffs coming to a head. There's a lot for all of us to consume, but unfortunately for a small staff like ours it limits the amount of analysis we can provide.
So, for now, that will have to wait for the slower weekdays. Today we focus on the 140 or so college hoops games that are on the docket while also providing you with our NFL Division Playoff picks, projections, betting edges and parlay options,
As often happens on these busy college basketball Saturdays, we will start with the early games and add to our betting edges, parlay options and recommended picks as the day goes on.
We've mentioned here many times that the win probability alone doesn't make a pick one that we would recommend to our paying customers - or anyone else for that matter. Once we determine which teams meet the criteria to be fully considered as All-Star or Superstar Picks according to our model, there is another process in which we run those teams through a rigorous set of rules and guidelines before settling on which, if any, make the cut to be recommended selections.
Remember that our Superstar Picks have a win probability of at least 70 percent, while our All-Star Picks come in at 60 percent or better.
As you read through today's information, keep in mind that we are extremely selective with our recommended picks as they need to have at least a 60-percent win probability or better according to our proprietary algorithm and also must pass through that stringent set of parameters that we consider for each matchup. In our daily posts you will find our recommended bets as well as games that don't quite make the cut to be recommended and which might make solid parlay options and other games where we believe there are edges favoring one side.
Parlays always will have a lower win probability than straight bets, but there are times that a parlay will meet our requirements and be recommended. We realize that many sports bettors prefer not to bet very short odds that approach and exceed -200, so in our goal to provide as much information and help as many people as possible, we do provide potential parlay options that are strong bets that don't quite make the cut for us as well as other games that have betting edges but also don't quite meet our high standards to be recommended picks.
Our college basketball betting edges have performed well, hovering at around 56 to 57 percent over a large sample size since early November, and our parlay options have been extremely successful as you can see below.
StatLogic Sports Superstar Picks for 1/18
Superstar Picks have a 70% or better win probability
CBB: SMU money line -220 at Miami (68% win probability) - WIN
NBA: TBD
StatLogic Sports All-Star Picks for 1/18
All-Star Picks have a 60% or better win probability
CBB: TBD
NBA: TBD
Parlay City
While we usually don't recommend parlays - mainly because it decreases the win probability while increasing the potential payout - for those who aren't interested in laying the juice, combining two of our money line recommended picks or pairing one of our recommended picks with other picks we think have betting edges often can be very strong plays as well. They just may not be strong enough to meet the criteria for us to recommend them, though, and are "bet at your own risk" like the other games we post that have betting edges.
Our potential money line parlay games from Jan. 4-6 were 19-1 ... they have gone 96-30 since Jan. 4 and were 18-2 Jan. 14-15.
Potential Money Line Parlay Options for 1/18
NBA:
TBD
CBB:
Western Michigan - LOSS
SMU - WIN
Cornell - WIN
Wake Forest - WIN
Belmont - WIN
UNC Greensboro - WIN
North Dakota State - WIN
Tennessee - LOSS
Notre Dame - LOSS
Charleston - WIN
Iowa State - LOSS
Drake - WIN
Marist - LOSS
San Francisco - WIN
Bucknell - WIN
NFL money line parlay options for this weekend include the Eagles and Chiefs. Pairing either of those with any of the teams listed above would be a solid bet to consider.
NCAA Basketball Season Betting Edge Record:
518-400-12 (56.4%)
Jan. 18 Record: 20-14
Jan. 17 Record: 6-4
Jan. 16 Record: 15-6
Jan. 15 Record: 8-11-1
Jan. 14 Record: 9-6
Jan. 13 Record: 3-2
Jan. 12 Record: 3-4
Last 7 days: 64-47-1 (57.7%)
Last 38 days: 333-256-8 (56.6%)
Stat-Logic Sports NCAA College Basketball Betting Edges 1/16
Creighton +8 at Connecticut - WIN
Clemson +4.5 at Pittsburgh - WIN
SMU -5 at Miami - WIN
Houston -12.5 at Central Florida - LOSS
George Washington +9 at George Mason - WIN
Auburn -5 at Georgia - LOSS
Arizona +4.5 at Texas Tech - LOSS
UTEP -2.5 at Florida International - WIN
St. Peter's +2.5 at Sacred Heart - WIN
Elon PICK -110 at Delaware - LOSS
Xavier +10 at Marquette - WIN
Columbia +8.5 vs. Yale - WIN
Wake Forest -3.5 at Virginia Tech - WIN
Dartmouth +8 vs. Princeton - WIN
Richmond +7 vs. St. Louis - WIN
Wisconsin +1.5 at USC - WIN
Miami Ohio +5.5 at Kent State - WIN
Tennessee -5 at Vanderbilt - LOSS
Illinois Chicago -1.5 at Valparaiso - WIN
South Carolina +8 at Oklahoma - LOSS
UC Davis +8.5 at UC Santa Barbara - WIN
Loyola Chicago +10 at Dayton - WIN
South Alabama money line -160 vs. Troy - WIN
Iowa State -6.5 at West Virginia - LOSS
Mississippi +6 at Mississippi State - WIN
Mercer +7.5 at Wofford - LOSS
Wichita State -3.5 vs. ECU - LOSS
New Mexico State +7.5 at Liberty - LOSS
Seton Hall +9 vs. St. John's - LOSS
BYU -1 at Utah - LOSS
San Francisco -3.5 vs. Oregon State - WIN
Colgate -1 at Lafayette - WIN
Holy Cross +2 vs. American - LOSS
Radford money line -160 at Charleston Southern - LOSS
more to follow
Our Process
We take a look at every single college and pro basketball game on the schedule every day. By using available data and a strict filtering progress, we are able to determine which games might present betting edges for us to examine more closely.
Since we are a small - but hopefully growing - family-oriented business, we only have so much manpower and bandwidth available to create content and break down games. Just trust us when we say that we follow a very detailed extensive process every day, which helps us weed out games, determine where there might be betting edges and ultimately determine which picks will meet our high standards to be the ones we recommend to clients and potential customers.
Because of the number of games that can be on the daily basketball docket - there were 130 college hoops games Saturday - and the attention we give to football now and baseball in the spring, there are some days when we don't have the time to break down our picks and potential picks and provide as much content as we like, so on days like that we may just post picks here or on our Twitter or BlueSky account.
Soon we also will be using TikTok, Instagram and YouTube to post picks, game breakdowns and other content as often ass possible. There also is a podcast in our future plans via which we will provide insight about games, picks and sports gambling to help anyone interested along their sports-gambling journey.
And we will continue to post and break down games that our model feels strongly about that are close to being recommended picks but don't make the cut for one reason or another. Those will be posted for anyone to see along with the games with betting edges you see below that we have been posting for several months now.
Those edges are presented in this space, along with any recommended picks from our proprietary algorithm, several times a week. Most of them will miss the cut to be recommended selections, because we have a very stringent set of requirements that must be met for a game to be released as an All-Star or Superstar Pick.
After analyzing as many as 50 different statistical categories and other factors for each contest, our proprietary algorithm proceeds to provide us with win probabilities for whichever games we run. Percentages are provided for spread bets, money-line bets and totals.
From there. we throw out any games that are below 60-percent win probability and then apply a rigorous set of rules and guidelines to each contest to determine which ones meet our final criteria. Information such as injuries, rest, coaching matchups, styles of play and pace, recent form and other data points are included in this process.
Once the process is complete, hopefully we are left with a few games that become recommended picks - and perhaps a few that narrowly miss the cut.
We usually don't recommend parlays, but we realize there are times when the short odds for one of our recommended picks makes betting a certain side prohibitive for some people. When that happens, although we may not recommend the parlay, we at least want to help those folks have the best chance of winning if that's the direction they choose to take.
So far in our tracking of college basketball games since the season opened in early November, the games we have determined to have betting edges have compiled a record of 518-400-12 (56.4%). All of our recommended picks that have been posted in all sports since mid-August have been winning consistently at about a 70-percent clip. ming
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