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Brooklyn at Detroit, NBA – Eddie Walls is a professional sports bettor who specializes in the NBA and college football. He sees a number of factors leading to fewer points in this game:
- Detroit has a top 3 defense in getting to an Eastern Conference best 45-16 record.
- Brooklyn has the worst offensive efficiency in having a dismal 15-47 record.
- Detroit star Cade Cunningham is questionable for this game with a left leg contusion.
Eddie makes the total in this game 211 with Cunningham, and he sees value in Brooklyn at Detroit under 215.5, which has already dropped a point this morning. Follow Eddie Walls for all of his NBA and college football insights and betting wisdom on the major sports.
College basketball player prop – North Carolina star freshman Caleb Wilson has missed the last 6 games and is now out for the season. One of the next most important players for the Tar Heels is guard Seth Trimble.
Even though he doesn’t play the same position as the power forward Wilson, Trimble’s minutes have increased to 33.5 per game without Wilson (31.0 before in conference play). The offensive load shifts to Trimble and Henri Veesaar, but the latter last to deal with the height of Duke.
A simple prediction based on conference statistics projects 13.7 points for Trimble, but it should be more based on the situation. There is value in Seth Trimble over 13.5 points, -110 at FanDuel. I expect Duke to pull away in the second half at home, so Trimble ideally gets his last buckets in garbage time.
Darryn Peterson – The Kansas freshman has the talent to become the top pick in the next NBA draft. However, Peterson has dealt with injury and cramping issues that have caused him to miss some games and not return to others.
Let’s look at the impact of Peterson by making Kansas a different team in those games in which he doesn’t play. Then I will run my college basketball team rankings that take margin of victory and adjust for strength of schedule with my mathematical algorithms.
When I ran calculation a week ago, Kansas was 2.2 points better without Peterson. After two losses at Arizona and Arizona State, Kansas is now 4.3 points better without Peterson.
Don’t make too much of this small sample size calculation and conclude that Kansas is better without Peterson. I do think it’s safe to say that Kansas is a very good team without the freshman (8th in the nation), and adding an effective Peterson to this core has a high ceiling.
Gonzaga – Do you hate on the little school from the Pacific northwest? Think they would fold with a power conference schedule?
Ken Pomeroy, the Godfather of college basketball analytics, notes that Gonzaga plays a power conference schedule every November and December. Opponents this season included Michigan and Kentucky. Gonzaga has the 4th best record against power conference teams since 2017 behind only traditional powers.
In addition, Gonzaga doesn’t schedule the bottom teams in power conferences. Looking at Gonzaga’s opponents record against other power conference teams, they have played the toughest set of opponents by a large margin.
I use the paid part of kenpom.com for my player based March Madness research, and I highly recommend checking it out.
Maybe not humor – For the AI truthers that think everyone will lose their job, Eric Jorgenson, CEO of Scribe Media, offers a lesson from history:
“Otis invented the automatic elevator around 1900. Push-button, no operator needed. People refused to use it. They’d walk in, see no operator, and walk right back out. So for decades, human operators kept riding up and down, pulling levers and announcing floors, while fully functional automatic buttons sat right there on the wall.
“Finally, there was a massive strike in 1945 that shut down all of New York City, costing $100 million and stranding 1.5 million workers. Building owners finally pushed hard for automation. Even then, it wasn’t until the 1970s that most elevators ran without a human inside.”
Smarter sports betting in less than 5 minutes
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