by A.J. Coltrane

I had pretty much the same year that I had last year — 22-14 (61.1%) on straight bets. I lost the one money line that I chose to play:  Providence were 4 point underdogs against UNC and +170 on the money line, meaning that if Providence won outright then the money line paid loosely twice what the “cover” bet would have paid. Providence lost by two, and covered, but I’d bet on them to win, so…   [insert raspberry sound here]

I also tried to get the +150 money line bet on La Tech against Georgia in the NIT, (and I would have won), but the slowpoke working the sportsbook decided he needed to restock pens instead of taking bets, and we missed the cutoff to place a bet on the game.  [insert another raspberry sound here]

This year’s VCU (misunderstood by the public) team was Colorado. Colorado were mild underdogs against Pitt. They trailed 46-18 at the half and went on to lose by 33. There are a few like that every year that are real head-scratchers, but they’re a big part of the success I’ve been seeing the last few years, so I’m not complaining.

Also, people had no idea that Tennessee is really pretty good.

Final note:  I *could* have gone 22-12 (64.7%) this year, but I ignored the beautiful fairy in my ear telling me to lay off of Ohio State vs Dayton. Twice. Once before my defensible-but-not-awesome-Ohio-State 1st half bet, and again at halftime before an even more ill-advised 2nd half bet.  “Ohio State is playing as badly as they can play. They can’t play worse than this!”

Nope. But they can play equally badly in the second half.

——-

For Fun. Here’s what I think I like Thursday and Friday:

Thursday:

Dayton vs Stanford, Over 133.

Baylor +3.5 vs Wisconsin. This is the game that I’m the least “sold on” for Thursday.

Florida -5 vs UCLA. (Though UCLA is better than people think, still.)

Arizona -7 vs San Diego State

Friday:

Michigan -2.5 vs Tennessee. (Sorry Tennessee, we had a good run!)

Iowa State vs UConn Under 146. The game that I’m the least “sold on” for Friday.

Louisville -5 vs Kentucky

Virginia +2 vs Michigan State. (The Virginia +115 money line looks like a good play too. Either/or would be fine.)

 

For the purposes of the “For Fun  Bets”, I unpacked and unfolded my NCAA notes. The compacted smell of Vegas cigarettes wafted out. Now the notes are sitting on the couch, stinking it up. Yay Vegas.

By A.J. Coltrane

For purposes of Vegas/March Madness this year I thought it might be helpful to consider how 3-point dependent individual teams were during the regular season. Some of that screwing around was discussed in this post.

Below are the top 10 teams in what I called “Vol” (for volatility) in that post. Below it’s called 3DEP (3 point dependency), which is what I’ll stick with going forward. 3DEP is simply 3 point percentage (x) % of 3 pointers attempted. At least in theory these ten teams rely upon the 3-pointer for a large percentage of their offense, so I’d kind of expect their performances to be very “up and down”. (To have a wider than usual deviation in their level of performance.) If the 3-pointer abandoned them, they were screwed. The flipside is that maybe they can get hot and beat a better team.

Look what happened in the game that knocked them out of the tournament:

Team (Seed)	3DEP	3P%	2P%	3PA%	3P% in Loss	2P% in Loss
Creighton 7	1667	42.1	56.4	39.6	10.5	41.2
Iowa St. 10	1624	37	52.1	43.9	48.0	40.7
Florida 3	1539	38.1	54.9	40.4	20.0	45.7
Valparaiso 14	1493	37.5	56.1	39.8	28.0	41.4
Belmont 11	1485	37.6	57.1	39.5	29.6	50.0
SD St 13	1434	39.4	50.3	36.4	34.8	50.0
St. Mary’s 11	1421	37.3	53.2	38.1	20.0	37.2
Davidson 14	1409	36.6	52.2	38.5	35.3	44.8
Arizona 6	1376	36.3	50.3	37.9	33.3	50.0
Boise St. 13	1362	38.7	48.2	35.2	38.9	54.3
Total		38.1	53.1	38.9	31.0	45.4

Well, duh. They didn’t shoot well and they lost the game. They didn’t shoot well from 2 either. I’m sure that happened to a lot of the losers, regardless of how many 3’s they attempted. If something hadn’t gone wrong they’d still be playing. We don’t really learn anything from that.

Continuing to mess with data though — as a group those are some low seeds — 7 of the 10 teams are double digit seeds. They’d all be underdogs starting with their first game. Look at when they got knocked out of the tournament:

Team (Seed)	Lost To	Round?
Creighton 7	Duke	Round of 32
Iowa St. 10	Ohio St	Round of 32
Florida 3	Michigan	Elite 8
Valparaiso 14	Michigan St	Round of 64
Belmont 11	Arizona	Round of 64
SD St 13	FGCU	Round of 32
St. Mary’s 11	Memphis	Round of 64
Davidson 14	Marquette	Round of 64
Arizona 6	Ohio St	Sweet 16
Boise St. 13	La Salle	Play In

In aggregate the underdogs went 2-4 in their first “real” game (St Mary’s won their play-in game.) Given a fat enough money line of between +150 and +200,  maybe they’d be worth betting on. Hmm…

Here’s 2012:

2012 Team	3P%	3PA%	3DEP	Round?
Florida 7	38.0	44.6	1695	Elite 8
Vanderbilt 5	38.8	41.2	1599	Round 32
Iowa St. 8	37.3	41.6	1552	Round 32
Belmont 14	38.1	40.1	1528	Round 64
Wisconsin 4	36.8	41.3	1520	Sweet 16
Missouri 2	39.8	37.9	1508	Round 64
Creighton 8	42.4	35.0	1484	Round 32
South Dakota St. 14	39.0	37.8	1474	Round 64
Duke 2	37.1	38.6	1432	Round 64
Nevada Las Vegas 6	36.7	38.9	1428	Round 64

Note the two upsets — both the #2 seeds lost. Is that useful? Maybe. But I am taking a note on it for later.

As far as the underdogs:  This year there were only two. And they both lost their first game. Our underdogs are now 2-6.

One more year. Here’s 2011:

2011 Team	3P%	3PA%	3DEP	Round?
Belmont 13	37.8	42.3	1599	Round 64
Wisconsin 4	37.4	41.2	1541	Sweet 16
Virginia Commonwealth 11	37.0	41.2	1524	Final Four
Michigan 8	35.3	43.0	1518	Round 32
Northern Colorado 15	38.3	39.4	1509	Round 64
Notre Dame 2	38.6	38.6	1490	Round 32
Louisville 4	36.2	40.8	1477	Round 64
Arizona 5	39.7	36.1	1433	Elite 8
Richmond 12	39.0	36.6	1427	Sweet 16
Boston University 16	35.5	40.1	1424	Round 64

I wouldn’t bet a 16 seed to beat a one seed regardless, so we’re tossing that one out. That leaves four teams who combined to go 2-2 in their first game.  All three years combined for 4-6 (not counting St. Mary’s play-in game).

If we restrict it to only the #10, #11, and #12 seeds the record is 3-2. Maybe there’s something there. I may have to do more digging. Coincidentally, my only money-line bet this year was on #12 seed Oregon at +160, and that one worked out. But Oregon didn’t rely on 3’s — they were 138th out of 150 during the regular season…

The never-ending quest for an angle continues.

by A.J. Coltrane

Before the NCAA Tournament I thought it would be fun to get a few people, give them $100 in Monopoly money, and have a blind bid on the tournament teams. The entry fee was 1 “twinkie” per person. The high bidder on the team that won the tournament would receive 3 twinkies, and the 2nd highest bidder would break even and gets his/her twinkie back.

I thought it would be an interesting experiment in game theory — do you put all of your money on a big favorite? There’s a very real possibility that everyone else will want to do that too, so you’d better bid a lot or risk wasting your investment. Alternately you could spread your money around, but what would be the minimum to “claim” each team?

As an added twist, it was possible to bid on “The Field”. “The Field” was defined as every team “leftover” that nobody had expressly bid upon. So — do you bid a lot on The Field, or do you value certain teams enough to put a nominal amount of money on them and hope you don’t get outbid?

The Outcome Of The Bidding:

Team	CW	BD	AJC	AS	Total	Result
Louisville	30	30	12		72	Win Champ
Ohio St	20	10	6	20	56	Elite 8
Georgetown	20	10		20	50	1st Round
Florida	20	10	16		46	Elite 8
Kansas		20	22		42	Sweet 16
The Field	10	10	2	20	42	Final Four
Duke			16	20	36	Elite 8
Indiana		10	12		22	Sweet 16
Miami			2	20	22	Sweet 16
Michigan			2		2	Champ Game
Michigan St			2		2	Sweet 16
Syracuse			2		2	Final Four
Wisconsin			2		2	1st Round
Gonzaga			2		2	Round of 32
Pittsburgh			2		2	1st Round

I [AJC] went with the strategy of trying to get as many teams as possible. I feel like I did pretty well for myself — I “won” Kansas, Indiana, Michigan, Michigan State, Syracuse, Wisconsin, Gonzaga, and Pittsburgh. If Florida, Duke, or Miami won the tournament I’d still break even. Overall it represented two #1 seeds plus a bunch of good quality to back it up. That “quality” wound up being half of the Final Four teams (Michigan and Syracuse.)

But what was I thinking with Pittsburgh? Bleh.. at least they were cheap.

Ultimately my strategy didn’t work out, of course. The #1 overall seed in the tournament was Louisville, and they did indeed win it all. (Though I was feeling pretty smart when Michigan was up 12 in the first half of he championship game.) Louisville was the team that we bid the most upon in total, and there’s definitely a good correlation between where we chose to invest and how wells the teams actually fared. The biggest “overperformers” were Michigan and Syracuse, while Georgetown was the biggest letdown.

Anyhow, I had fun with it. Hopefully somebody will want to try it again next year.