Looking for sharp sports betting action this weekend? Your curated list of tips, analytics and humor, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.
College basketball spread bet – Dr. Bob Sports, the gold standard in handicapping, likes the player personnel changes in St. Bonaventure at Massachusetts.
For St. Bonventure, Chance Moore injured his foot in late January. He hasn’t played well and missed the last game. Along with the absence of Dasonte Bowen, St. Bonaventure is much worse according to their numbers.
In contrast, Massachusetts has been much better with Daniel Hankins-Sanford in the starting line up, and he has started the past two games. Dr. Bob has a prediction of Massachusetts by 4, and they like Massachusetts -1.5, -120 available at FanDuel (noon Eastern tip).
Dr. Bob Sports has had an excellent college basketball season. Check out their site for more details about their service.
Trend on NBA totals – Some statistical trends have such a large sample size that you can’t ignore it. Professional bettor Carl Sack noticed that afternoon NBA games are lower scoring than night games, a trend that he initially didn’t understand.
Only much later did Carl figure out why. NBA players are used to night games, so an afternoon game tends to throw off their biorhythms. An afternoon game should have a total a point less than a night game.
Carl uses KillerSports.com to research these types of trends. He also talked about his model driven NBA betting in a must listen episode of The Football Analytics Show podcast.
Justin Herbert – The Los Angeles Chargers had a strong 11-6 record before losing to Houston in the playoffs. Should these results generate optimism in 2025?
Let’s look at Justin Herbert’s passing success rate and yards per pass attempt compared to the NFL average of 43.3% and 6.23 in 2024. These numbers have been adjusted for opposing defenses by my metrics:
- 2024: 42.5% success rate, 6.60 yards per pass attempt.
- 2023: 42.6% success rate, 6.08 yards per pass attempt.
- 2022: 41.8% success rate, 6.11 yards per pass attempt.
Herbert looks the part, but these are mediocre numbers over a three season span in which the young quarterback should be improving.
College basketball analytics – Auburn only came into the season ranked 11th in the preseason AP poll. Maybe the sports writers underestimated this team because of their Round of 64 upset to Yale in the 2024 NCAA tournament.
Auburn has a 22-2 record and rank first in my team rankings based on adjusted margin of victory. Led by big Johni Broome, Auburn has the top ranked offense by my adjusted points per possession.
However, Auburn is not first in my market rankings that take closing spreads and adjust for opponents. The markets like Duke and their talented crop of freshmen the most.
For a limited time, the advanced metrics usually saved for paying members of The Power Rank are available to view for free.
Super Bowl humor – We end the NFL season with a twofer.
Smarter sports betting in less than 5 minutes
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