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StatLogic Sports NCAA & NBA Daily Hoops Hustle: Slowing the Pace

Scott L.

Updated: Jan 16



By Scott L. - SL Sports Staff

There's a lot going on in the world of college basketball at this time of year.


Conference play is in full swing, meaning that we have nearly 150 games on some Saturdays, and there may be between 50 and 100 contests on some weeknights. That means teams are playing two and three times a week, which naturally creates some interesting travel and fatigue spots for some schools as they play against more rested teams in hostile road environments.


This year, it's even crazier given conference realignment and the growing number of cross-country, multi-day road trips. And we are going from several weeks of winter-break games that featured many half-empty gyms with very few students to more full arenas with louder and more raucous fan support. Home-court advantage is back.


There are teams that may have faltered at home for a few games playing in less-than-enthusiastic environments and weaker teams that may have taken advantage of the lull in support for home teams to be more successful than expected on the road. In addition, more players are heading back to class and getting returning to their longer, more taxing daily routines, which include classes, practice, lifting, academic commitments and overall higher stress levels.


So, while we might expect the odds, game lines and our model numbers to become more accurate now that we are 2-1/2 months into the season, the reality is that the numbers may have become a tad skewed. The numbers are the numbers, though, and they fluctuate based on performance, and several weeks of "false positives" or "false negatives" can impact odds, lines and projections pretty significantly.


While we can come up with formulas to assign numbers that aren't simply arbitrary to factors such as home-court advantage, rest vs. rested, extensive travel, etc., the formulas and numbers assigned often are inexact. How do you account for a home or road win in front of 5,000 fans with no students and a win in front of a packed house of 15,000 or more frenzied spectators?


Some games played during winter break on mid-major and smaller campuses literally might have 100 or even fewer fans in attendance. Those games seem like maybe they should be handicapped in similar fashion to neutral-site games as opposed to home contests, even though there certainly is an advantage to shooting in a familiar gym and sleeping in your own bed.


Then there are travel implications and teams playing multiple road games in a week or even traveling 3,000 miles for a weekend road contest then all the way back for a home game on Wednesday. Travel and lack of rest always should be considered in handicaps, but we've never seen anything like the travel that is taking place this season, so any adjustments made based on those factors are likely to be at least somewhat arbitrary.


We probably won't have any usable data on how the more extensive travel required by conference realignment affects teams until we have a large enough sample size to make the numbers meaningful. That certainly isn't happening his season, and realistically it might be several years before the data really takes shape.


The University of California's recent schedule provides a great example. The Golden Bears have an 8-8 overall record during their first season as a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference. They and Stanford are the only West Coast-based institution in the league, so both schools knew entering the school year that their athletic teams would face substantial travel challenges.


The Bears traveled across the country for a pair of tough games at Pittsburgh and Clemson Jan. 1 and 4. They returned home to take on Virginia and Virginia Tech Jan. 8 and 11. Tonight, Cal is a 14.5-point underdog back on the East Coast at North Carolina.


While they did manage to beat a UVA team that also had traveled 3,000 miles, the Bears have gone 1-3 in those games thus far and lost to a weak Virginia Tech team as a 7-point home favorite in their most recent outing.


At this point, Cal has traveled 9,000 miles in the new year and back and forth through multiple time zones three times. The good news is that they get to stay on the East Coast for a few days without changing hotels before taking on North Carolina State Saturday and making the trek back home yet again. After that, Cal gets two home games in a seven-day span before heading halfway across the United States to Texas for a game at SMU to close the month.


If the Bears lost at home to a bad Virginia Tech team Saturday, how much can we expect out of them tonight? Normally, a 14.5-point spread would seem pretty steep against an underachieving UNC squad, but the Tar Heels have played better lately and tonight that number may be way too low. It's possible that Cal also might be undervalued at NC State Saturday after being able to rest a bit in the same location for a few days.


That's just a hunch, though. How do we really quantify any of that information? The answer to that question is that we can't.


We do know that teams are going to be affected by these new, exhausting travel schedules, so we can assign some arbitrary numbers to the matchups for some of the travel spots, but these are nothing more than educated guesses. Hence, at least for now, many of the point spreads and projections based on analytical models that we see are likely to be at least somewhat flawed.


There's no way around that, and this time of year with students returning to campuses, classes starting and everything that goes with all of that - on top of the new travel requirements - handicapping college hoops becomes even more difficult. We need to look no further than the numerous surprising results we've seen during the last week or so for evidence.


Our results certainly have taken a bit of a hit in the past week.


The first step in our handicapping process is to determine all the games that we feel present a betting edge for one side or the other. Because our model analyzes a ton of statistics for each matchup and we have a stringent set of rules and guidelines that we put every game through, we are extremely selective when it comes to which picks we release as "recommended."


Since mid-August when we launched this site, our All-Star Picks have won at better than a 65-percent rate, while our Superstar Picks have hovered at around a 70-percent win rate or better. All-Star Selections are the ones that have a 60-percent or better win probability according to our model, and Superstar Picks carry better than a 70-percent win probability.


Since Friday, our Superstar hoops picks have gone 3-2, while our All-Star Picks are 4-4. But we are in the midst of a 1-4 skid with All-Star selections. The last four Superstar Picks are 2-2.


Meanwhile, our college hoops games with betting edges that don't make the cut as recommended picks but still tend to be profitable over the long term, have been very strong all year, winning at a 56.2-percent rate with a sample size of nearly 900 games. But our percentage was around 57 percent before going 71-62-3 (53.4 percent) over the past nine days.


This is normal in the world of sports gambling. Even the best professional handicappers are thrilled to be able to win 55 to 60 percent of the time, and no matter what anyone tells you, there are no "locks."


But just like we would recommend to any sports bettor, we will tell ourselves to slow the pace a bit and to be even more selective. Over the next few days - and maybe longer - we will be eliminating more games from consideration than usual at the very beginning of our process and be even more selective with our recommended picks.


Sometimes less is more, and the best bets are the ones we don't make. The goal is long-term profitability, and the answer is NEVER throwing more money at more games in hopes of recovering from a few rough days.


Our recommended picks have been profitable and provided our investor-level top clients with an ROI equal or better to most other investment opportunities available to them for two decades for a reason.

Stay the course. Stick with us, and we won't lead you down the wrong path. The measure of success is how we do over three months, six months, one year, three years and beyond.


When the going gets tough, we take a step back, slow the pace, figure out what the issue might be and take it one bet and one day at a time. It hasn't failed us yet.


The good news is that many teams still have up to 15 conference games plus their conference tournaments remaining, so the numbers and projections will become more accurate with each passing day going forward.


Here are today's NBA & NCAA college basketball betting edges, recommended picks and parlay options:



StatLogic Sports Superstar Pick for 1/15

Superstar Picks have a 70% or better win probability

CBB: SMU money line -260 at Virginia (70% win probability) - WIN

NBA: TBD


StatLogic Sports All-Star Picks for 1/15

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 edtes.


Our potential money line parlay games from Jan. 4-6 were 19-1 ... they have gone 78-20 since Jan. 4 and 18-2 the last two nights!



Potential Money Line Parlay Options for 1/15


NBA:

TBD


CBB:

SMU - WIN

Dayton - LOSS

Nebraska Omaha - WIN

Samford - WIN

Wake Forest - WIN

Cleveland State - WIN

Radford - WIN

Boston University - WIN

Furman - WIN


NCAA Basketball Season Betting Edge Record:

477-376-12 (55.9%)


Jan. 15: 8-11-1

Jan. 14 Record: 9-6

Jan. 13 Record: 3-2

Jan. 12 Record: 3-4

Jan. 11 Record: 22-20-1

Jan. 10 Record: 4-4-0

Jan. 9 Record: 8-7-0

Jan. 8 Record: 10-8-1

Jan. 7 Record: 7-9-1

Jan. 6 Record: 5-2-0


Last 10 days: 79-73-4 (52.0%)

Last 35 days: 292-232-8 (55.7%)



Stat-Logic Sports NCAA College Basketball Betting Edges 1/15

Colgate -2.5 at Navy - WIN

South Carolina +9 at Vanderbilt - WIN

Davidson -2 at La Salle - LOSS

Seton Hall +7 at Butler - WIN

Kansas +5.5 at Iowa State - LOSS

IUPUI +10 at Oakland - LOSS

Cleveland State -4 vs. Northern Kentucky - WIN

IPFW -2 at Wright State - WIN

UNC -14.5 vs. California - WIN

Richmond +13 at St. Bonaventure - LOSS

NC State - 1 at Virginia Tech - LOSS

Southern Mississippi +12 at South Alabama - LOSS

Indiana State +8 at Bradley - LOSS

Houston -16 vs. West Virginia - PUSH

Georgia +12 at Tennessee - LOSS

Nebraska Omaha -4.5 at Denver - WIN

Pittsburgh -2 at Florida State - LOSS

Oklahoma money line -145 vs. Texas - LOSS

Lafayette -1 at Army - LOSS

Holy Cross +6 at Bucknell - WIN



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 477-376-12 (55.9%). 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.



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