Looking for sports betting action this weekend? Your curated list of tips, analytics, and humor, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.
NFL draft bet – Adam Chernoff of Right Angle Sports has started a newsletter, and he brings his signature depth of insight into every issue. His recent newsletters have focused on the draft, and he uses a wisdom of crowds approach for the Chicago Bears with the 9th pick.
The team website asked 16 experts about the pick, and 10 favored WR Rome Odunze from Washington. Malik Nabers from LSU has become the consensus second WR, which allows Odunze to drop to 9th.
Adam sees value in Odunze, +210 at FanDuel to go 9th to the Chicago Bears. While the market has moved his direction for most of his bets, there is also still value in the market for first defensive player.
Boston Bruins at Pittsburgh Penguins, NHL – Pro bettor Rob Pizzola notes that the Penguins recent run of form may be surprising considering they traded away Jake Guentzel at the trade deadline. However, this is a team that has played much better than their results have indicated this season.
On the season, Pittsburgh has a 51.6% expected goal share at 5v5 which is ahead of some other respected playoff teams like the Golden Knights, Lightning, and tonight’s opponent, the Bruins. That number has not wavered since the trade of Guentzel, and the Penguins are finally starting to get some shooting luck.
Rob likes Pittsburgh +110 at home versus Boston, available at DraftKings, and he sees value to a price of +105. Check out all of the work Rob and colleagues do at The Hammer. Note: this is an extra nugget that didn’t make it into the email newsletter.
Masters – While three golfers are tied atop the leaderboard, Bryson Dechambeau is the most interesting of these leaders. Data Golf gives him a 21.6% to win based on their data driven model. This suggests value on +450 for Dechambeau to win (18.2% break even probability).
Data Golf, run by the brothers Will and Matthew Corchene, also liked Dechambeau before the start of the tournament. However, the numbers and markets made Scott Scheffler the huge favorite before the start of the Masters. As one of the three leaders, Scheffler is still the favorite to win.
Data Golf is an excellent resource data driven analytics, and I subscribe to their paid services for predictive analytics.
UFC 300 – Nine months after an injury forced him to relinquish his belt, Jamahal Hill returns to win back the Light Heavyweight division against Alex Pereira. Mark Drumheller of Betting Life notes the power of both fighters, as the markets have a total of 1.5 rounds in a match that could go 5 rounds.
Mark thinks the champion Pereira keeps his hands low, which could get him in trouble with the dangerous Hill. He also sees advantage for Hill if the match goes to the mat.
In the feature event of UFC 300, Mark sees value in Jamahal Hill over Alex Pereira, +116 at FanDuel as of Saturday morning.
The runt of the family – Dan Hurley grew up in a high achieving basketball family:
- Older brother Bobby Hurley won two NCAA tournaments as a Duke player.
- Father Bob Hurley Sr. won 26 high school basketball championships in New Jersey as a coach.
After living under this shadow for almost 50 years, Dan has broken through with two remarkable NCAA tournament championships at Connecticut. In 12 tournament games the past two years, the smallest margin of victory has been 13 points.
With this remarkable run, it’s worth revisiting a recent podcast episode. On The Football Analytics Show, I read a chapter on Dan Hurley from The Miracle of St. Anthony, the amazing book by Adrian Wojnarowski that tells the story of growing up under this pressure.
Basketball humor – I almost strayed from humor this week because of a remarkable eclipse photo from Red Bull. But then we were blessed by this play by the Chicago Bulls.
Smarter sports betting in less than 5 minutes
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