Iowa is pretty bad right now but not having Fredrick is a way bigger deal to them than most realize. (IMO)

Who do you think is clearly better? Not trolling, legitimate Q as I mostly only watch the WV games.

FWIW Kenpom does have the gap between #1 Baylor and #5 Iowa as large as the gap between #5 Iowa and #37 BYU.

It seems like this year Baylor/Gonzaga look to be in a clearly separate tier, Michigan was maybe in that tier maybe not but also hasn't played in a month so who knows, then like 20 teams are all roughly in the same boat.

Not sure who I'd even pick ahead of Iowa...

UVA who lost to San Francisco, Gonzaga by 23, VT by 14 and who has zero top-40 wins?

Villanova who is 3-2 against the Kenpom top-70?

Houston, who has 1 top-50 win, and lost to #94 Tulsa and #135 ECU?

Alabama, who has lost 2 of 3, is just 5-4 against the top-40 and has a loss to #85 Western Kentucky on top of that?

I guess OSU, who has beaten Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin on the road, as well as UCLA and ND for at least a modicum of OOC beef is the clear answer.



To be clear, Iowa's resume isn't great either. Lost 4 of 5 (albeit to top-25 teams and 3 were close), but 2-5 against top-25 teams and 5-6 against top-45 teams isn't exactly confidence inspiring

1 Gonzaga
2 Baylor
3 Michigan
4 Ohio State
5 Illinois
6 Houston
7 Tennessee
8 UVA
9 Villanova
10 USC? Alabama? Texas Tech?

Seems about right to me

With so few OOC games and no midseason OOC calibrations this year, I am a little wary of the B1G getting overrated by running hot early and then compounding that in a bubble the rest of the year

Also, Gonzaga vs Baylor seems like a total tossup

Baylor is 17-0 with only 2 games within 10 points (@ TTU by 8 and v KU by 8)
Gonzaga is 18-0 with only 1 game within 10 points (n WVU by 5)

Baylor:
n 4 Illinois +13
@ 15 TTU +8
@ 16 Texas +14
v 23 OU +15
v 27 KU +8
@ 34 Ok St +15
v 59 Auburn +12

Gonzaga:
n 5 Iowa +11
n 9 Virginia +23
n 19 WVU +5
n 27 KU +12
v 37 BYU +17
n 59 Auburn +23


Baylor still has TTU, @ WV, WV, Ok St, @ KU plus the conf tourney on deck

For obvious reasons, Gonzaga's biggest wins are all neutral games early in the season, while Baylor has (and will have) many more true road tests

Would probably throw Texas in the pile around 10, though they've struggled lately I think. Oklahoma.

Probably move Tennessee down a few slots and have USC around 20, though their win over UCLA has my attention.

Rutgers is the team I'm higher on than their metrics. For whatever reason, they just didn't play defense early on and then Myles Johnson remembered he can dominate and now they seem back to being great defensively like they were last year.

Fitting for the year of Covid:

Rutgers looked dangerous at the beginning of the season, but RHJ has fallen off a cliff. Not sure if it's b10 play, but the team struggles when he's not playing well. Also, Myles Johnson is one of the worst FT shooters I've ever seen. Teams should be intentionally fouling him when in the single bonus, and even in the double bonus in certain situations. Rutgers suck at FTs as a team as well. Currently rank 345/347 from what I see.

Maybe Ohio St but they don't play defense this year either for some reason. Prob watch some of that game tonight.
I like Nova more than Iowa for sure

Looks just like a bummy year for top depth I guess. Looking back over the years at the #5 kenpom team Iowa record wise isn't going to be anywhere near those. Iowa is going to end up with double digit losses.

IU beat Iowa and didn't move up in the NET. IU has been much much lower in the NET compared to all the other metrics every year so far.

Just looked it up. Baylor is actually currently #2 all time in the KenPom era(behind only 15 UK).

Gonzaga is #4 all time slightly behind a Kansas team a while back.

The pieces fit together on offense somehow but you can definitely take advantage of them on defense. They don't have a lot of size and are below average in athleticism at a couple spots.

Re Rutgers, they're way too dependent on Myles Johnson. If he gets into foul trouble or is having a rough game mentally they go off a cliff, the front line depth is weak. I don't know what the hell happened to Montez Mathis but he's looked awful every time I've seen them play. The guards are high variance. All things being equal I'd rather not play them, but the ceiling is probably 5th or 6th best team in the B1G.

Kenpom and thus the Vegas odds are pretty screwy I think. There were so many fewer OOC games this year and so many teams barely practiced or had tons of players miss games, that the variance in the rankings is really extreme.

Like, do you really think that Baylor, who probably has zero NBA players is as good as 38-1 Kentucky who had 8 NBA players and 2 NBA all stars? Or do you think there is a ton of rand?

Do you really think the B1G is the best conference in the history of basketball and the Pac (which didn't notch a single top-30 OOC win) is the worst Pac of all time? Totally possible! But more likely it's just super rand and everything is skewed by the early results.

Gonzaga at least has 2 or 3 NBA players, but their highest minutes players are senior, junior, soph, junior, frosh, soph. They're old and deep and experienced! Of course they blitzed the **** out of a bunch of teams on neutral courts early in the season amidst the chaos.

I'm not saying Gonzaga/Baylor aren't good or aren't the best teams, I'm just saying that the amount of rand that got thrown into the #s this year plus the fact that the tourney is gonna be a total cluster**** and that forfeit chances make each game slightly closer to 50/50, I am buying tons of longshots.

Colorado at 110-1
Houston at 25-1
Wisconsin at 40-1
WVU 47-1
USC at 66-1
SDSU 155-1
Texas Tech 32-1
Tennessee 29-1
Duke 150-1
Kansas 150-1
Florida 150-1

etc


And if I'm right, can just start hedging like crazy in the actual tourney and lock up some profits

Maybe not Duke 150-1, they might not even make the dance

K is good at winning the ACCT.

I wonder if Kyle Young would come back as a 5th year senior for the free year of eligibility next year

If he does, and assuming everyone else returns as well and doesn't transfer elsewhere obviously, Ohio State may be preseason #1

lol, Bryce Drew... coaching changes really went to crap when they started letting so many people on the acct, had to unfollow it long ago.

I like this strat, but you are being a bit harsh on Zaga. They have 3-4 NBA players, with one being a top 3-5 pick and the other being a borderline lottery pick. Also, you must have a really nice book because I'm not seeing odds those long for almost all the teams you listed on regulated or popular offshore books.

Speaking of odds, FanDuel is still showing Ayo Dosunmu at +900 to win the Wooden Award and Garza is at -3500. Feels like they are a lot closer in public perception than those odds imply.

One of the highest paid public employees in the greatest state of the USA#1!



At least he didn't try to encourage his dotard gang to hang their enemies.

I have accounts on betonline, bovada, bookmaker, heritage, nitro, circa (proxy) and fanduel (proxy) and take the best odds from each.

Bookmaker and Circa are the source of a lot of the best odds on longshots. Bovada and Nitro have insanely high juice but have really, really stale odds. Heritage is pretty much useless . BOL is great all-around, but pretty low limits on futures

NW, with the worst defense in the conference during conference play, has IU under double digits still 13 mins into the game

Just turned it on, so far it appears that IU has made the correct adjustment: Get the ball to TJD on every single possession

Edit: Never mind, that lasted about three possessions, they're back to playing stupid.

Really thought we might see a NW sweep of Archie but that 34-10 FT advantage was just enough to see IU sneak by