Betting against the spread

[ice-9]

My friends know me as a college basketball fan, and often asked for my advice last season when it came to betting against the spread or the over/under. Given that I was a Duke guy and Duke actually won the national championship, I was right way more often than I was wrong. :)

Anyway I thought it would be fun to leverage the collective intelligence of the DBR community in taking a call on the spread and over/under of various games throughout the season. I'm keeping a spreadsheet to track all my picks and will update this thread throughout the season, let's see where we end up in April!

My pick begins with Pittsburgh giving Rhode Island 12. Pittsburgh is an experienced team picked to win the Big East and ranked top five in the nation. Rhode Island returns on paper much of the same team that defeated Virginia Tech in the NIT last year and narrowly lost to UNC. But the players they lost mattered a lot; they were a "big 3" team in Keith Cothran, Delroy James and Ulmer Lamonte. Only James returns, which poses big questions for Rhode Island. Ultimately, I think they will miss Cothran's scoring and Lamonte's rebounding too much. For a Pitt team looking to make a statement as a national title contender, playing at home, I expect Pitt to win by more than 12.

[SilkyJ]

There was a NFL pick'ems league for DBR folks on Yahoo that lots of people joined. If you can figure out a way to start a Yahoo/ESPN group (or some other easy, web-based system) for this thing I'd definitely participate, and I'm sure others would too.

If you can't find a web-based service, maybe you could make a spreadsheet and start an email group or something? I think its going to be hard to get people to participate if there isn't an easy way to receive and digest the info (i.e. people are going to go scour the interwebs on their own for the lines each day.)

Just a thought, b/c I'd be down to participate.

(and BTW I think you're right with Pitt v URI)

[Orange&BlackSheep]

Anyway I thought it would be fun to leverage the collective intelligence of the DBR community ...

My pick begins with Pittsburgh giving Rhode Island 12. Pittsburgh is an experienced team picked to win the Big East and ranked top five in the nation. Rhode Island returns on paper much of the same team that defeated Virginia Tech in the NIT last year and narrowly lost to UNC. But the players they lost mattered a lot; they were a "big 3" team in Keith Cothran, Delroy James and Ulmer Lamonte. Only James returns, which poses big questions for Rhode Island. Ultimately, I think they will miss Cothran's scoring and Lamonte's rebounding too much. For a Pitt team looking to make a statement as a national title contender, playing at home, I expect Pitt to win by more than 12.

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of the "Wisdom of the Crowd" is not skewing them with the facts as you see them. By laying out the facts as you see them to people, you are already moving the needle I think.

Just sayin' .... I know this is just for fun.

[ice-9]

I kinda saw this thread as a conversation starter to glean DBR's collective intelligence, not so much as a way to capture DBR's collective picks -- I started with the latter but faced questions of how it would be done (majority vote? committee of few? each person each vote?) without needing to expend a lot of energy that I didn't have and ended up in the former. I.e., I'll present my picks and get the conversation rolling.

Aaaaaaaaand not off to an auspicious start, Pitt only up 4 with 6 minutes left to go.

[ice-9]

Final score: Pitt 83, RI 75.

Overall record: 0-1.

[-jk]

We're concerned with discussions explicitly built around gambling. And, yes, I do know a massive amount of money is wagered on college ball, and even some of it legally. We just don't need to focus on it here. We want our focus to be on the game, not the gaming around the game.

The spread, the over/under, and more often than not Pomeroy and Sagarin predictors do get worked into the overall context of a game discussion, and that's OK.

If anyone can find an online game management system, something like Survivor Football for NCAA hoops, that would be a different story (and maybe we can even draft Jason Evans to run it!). A straight up discussion of the gambling world? Well that's not really our style.

So for now I'm closing this thread.

-jk