March 27-28: NCAA Sweet 16 picks
Sports prognosticating is a funny business. We've all seen the people who claim outrageous winning percentages. Sometimes they're plain lying, and other times they're just using short samples and/or a narrow set of picks that they're able to market.
I've mostly avoided that guilt-by-association because I've always been honest with my readers. I've never claimed to be a professional handicapper (I certainly try to act like one by diligently handicapping the games/races and shopping for the best prices available) but I've tried to always make it clear I'm a journalist first and a handicapper second. Having the forum to offer my opinions and have people take me seriously is and always has been a bonus.
I've had some really successful runs over the years where people have praised me far more than I deserved and stressed that I should be selling picks, but I've also had really bad runs in which people questioned my sanity and/or manhood and have gone so far as to speculate that I must have had incriminating photos of my bosses in order to keep my job.
This NCAA tournament has been a prime example of a really bad run. Seriously, I don't think you'll find a colder college basketball handicapper than yours truly (and it'll be even harder to find one who admits as such). My record against the spread from the start of the main bulk of the tournament last Thursday through Sunday was 21-27. OK, that's not too terrible when you consider all the favorites that covered early, but check out my record on my "best bets": 2-10.
I'll let that sink in a minute. 2 wins, 10 losses. That's a woeful 16.7 percent. With the 10 percent vigorish on losing bets, that's a net loss of 9 units in just 12 bets, which is really hard to do. What makes it even worse is that one of those wins was Sunday with Tennessee -4.5 vs. Butler. The game went to overtime and the Vols won 76-71 to not only win but cover the spread, barely by half a point in my case.
Oh, sure, I had some bad breaks along the way and games I should have covered, but there's no sense in making excuses when it's such a landslide. It's like in the 1940 NFL championship game when the Bears beat the Redskins 73-0. After the game, a reporter asked Washington quarterback Sammy Baugh if the result would have been different if one of his receivers hadn't dropped a TD pass early in the game. "Yeah," Baugh said, "it would have been 73-7."
The only thing I can do it to look at where I felt I went wrong in the early rounds and try to learn from my mistakes. Seriously, we all need to do that as handicappers. We learn more from our losing bets than from our winning bets. At least that's how we need to approach it.
So, here's my plays for Thursday's and Friday's Sweet 16 round:
THURSDAY
WASHINGTON ST. +8.5 vs. North Carolina
LOUISVILLE -2.5 vs. Tennessee (either team could win by blowout, like Cards in close game)
Xavier +1 vs. West Virginia
Western Kentucky +13.5 vs. Ucla
FRIDAY
Villanova +12 vs. Kansas
Wisconsin -4.5 vs. Davidson
TEXAS -1.5 Stanford (great matchup in frontcourt, give backcourt edge to Longhorns)
MICHIGAN ST. +5 vs. Memphis (I bet +5.5, playable at 5, gotta go with better D, & against Memphis FT shooting)
I've mostly avoided that guilt-by-association because I've always been honest with my readers. I've never claimed to be a professional handicapper (I certainly try to act like one by diligently handicapping the games/races and shopping for the best prices available) but I've tried to always make it clear I'm a journalist first and a handicapper second. Having the forum to offer my opinions and have people take me seriously is and always has been a bonus.
I've had some really successful runs over the years where people have praised me far more than I deserved and stressed that I should be selling picks, but I've also had really bad runs in which people questioned my sanity and/or manhood and have gone so far as to speculate that I must have had incriminating photos of my bosses in order to keep my job.
This NCAA tournament has been a prime example of a really bad run. Seriously, I don't think you'll find a colder college basketball handicapper than yours truly (and it'll be even harder to find one who admits as such). My record against the spread from the start of the main bulk of the tournament last Thursday through Sunday was 21-27. OK, that's not too terrible when you consider all the favorites that covered early, but check out my record on my "best bets": 2-10.
I'll let that sink in a minute. 2 wins, 10 losses. That's a woeful 16.7 percent. With the 10 percent vigorish on losing bets, that's a net loss of 9 units in just 12 bets, which is really hard to do. What makes it even worse is that one of those wins was Sunday with Tennessee -4.5 vs. Butler. The game went to overtime and the Vols won 76-71 to not only win but cover the spread, barely by half a point in my case.
Oh, sure, I had some bad breaks along the way and games I should have covered, but there's no sense in making excuses when it's such a landslide. It's like in the 1940 NFL championship game when the Bears beat the Redskins 73-0. After the game, a reporter asked Washington quarterback Sammy Baugh if the result would have been different if one of his receivers hadn't dropped a TD pass early in the game. "Yeah," Baugh said, "it would have been 73-7."
The only thing I can do it to look at where I felt I went wrong in the early rounds and try to learn from my mistakes. Seriously, we all need to do that as handicappers. We learn more from our losing bets than from our winning bets. At least that's how we need to approach it.
So, here's my plays for Thursday's and Friday's Sweet 16 round:
THURSDAY
WASHINGTON ST. +8.5 vs. North Carolina
LOUISVILLE -2.5 vs. Tennessee (either team could win by blowout, like Cards in close game)
Xavier +1 vs. West Virginia
Western Kentucky +13.5 vs. Ucla
FRIDAY
Villanova +12 vs. Kansas
Wisconsin -4.5 vs. Davidson
TEXAS -1.5 Stanford (great matchup in frontcourt, give backcourt edge to Longhorns)
MICHIGAN ST. +5 vs. Memphis (I bet +5.5, playable at 5, gotta go with better D, & against Memphis FT shooting)
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