Puke prediction thread

A betting line is not an indication of how much Vegas feels one team will beat another by.  It is an arbitrary number (sure they use some metrics as a starting point) designed to provoke equal betting action on the favorite and the dog.  Nothing more...nothing less.

Trust me, I am quite aware of that. However, with analytics having become much more mainstream in recent years, Vegas has adopted it as the main means of setting a line they believe is best suited to get equal action on both sides. For example, if Vegas blindly throws out a line of Team A -4 when the KenPoms, Sagarins and other CBB analytic sites project Team A to win by 8-10, guess which side the majority of the money is going to flow.

Imagine running a sportsbook and having to post a line on each of the 5 Ohio Valley Conference games that are being played on a given night with the goal of making the line accurate enough to draw close to even action on both sides of every game. Do you think they have some OVC expert projecting what the lines should be, or do they use analytics as the main driver for the opening line? It's the latter.

Analytics has completely overtaken every aspect of sports, and you'd be a fool to believe that Vegas doesn't depend heavily on it in their linesmaking. This is because the only way to be a successful sports bettor over a long period of time is to have an analytics based system more accurate than the linesmaking system. Vegas knows this and isn't going to allow anybody to have that edge.

If you want to confirm this for yourself you can. There will probably be in the neighborhood of 75 lined CBB games this Saturday. Just buy a subscription to KenPom.com and check out the score projections for this Saturday's games on that site. Match them up with the point spreads and you'll see the vast majority of the lines are within a point of the KenPom projection. There will certainly be exceptions, but again, analytics drives the line.

A close game

Trust me, I am quite aware of that. However, with analytics having become much more mainstream in recent years, Vegas has adopted it as the main means of setting a line they believe is best suited to get equal action on both sides. For example, if Vegas blindly throws out a line of Team A -4 when the KenPoms, Sagarins and other CBB analytic sites project Team A to win by 8-10, guess which side the majority of the money is going to flow.

Imagine running a sportsbook and having to post a line on each of the 5 Ohio Valley Conference games that are being played on a given night with the goal of making the line accurate enough to draw close to even action on both sides of every game. Do you think they have some OVC expert projecting what the lines should be, or do they use analytics as the main driver for the opening line? It's the latter.

Analytics has completely overtaken every aspect of sports, and you'd be a fool to believe that Vegas doesn't depend heavily on it in their linesmaking. This is because the only way to be a successful sports bettor over a long period of time is to have an analytics based system more accurate than the linesmaking system. Vegas knows this and isn't going to allow anybody to have that edge.

If you want to confirm this for yourself you can. There will probably be in the neighborhood of 75 lined CBB games this Saturday. Just buy a subscription to KenPom.com and check out the score projections for this Saturday's games on that site. Match them up with the point spreads and you'll see the vast majority of the lines are within a point of the KenPom projection. There will certainly be exceptions, but again, analytics drives the line.

Thank you.  That's very interesting.  I feel like the Alec Baldwin character in "The Cooler".

Trust me, I am quite aware of that. However, with analytics having become much more mainstream in recent years, Vegas has adopted it as the main means of setting a line they believe is best suited to get equal action on both sides. For example, if Vegas blindly throws out a line of Team A -4 when the KenPoms, Sagarins and other CBB analytic sites project Team A to win by 8-10, guess which side the majority of the money is going to flow.

Imagine running a sportsbook and having to post a line on each of the 5 Ohio Valley Conference games that are being played on a given night with the goal of making the line accurate enough to draw close to even action on both sides of every game. Do you think they have some OVC expert projecting what the lines should be, or do they use analytics as the main driver for the opening line? It's the latter.

Analytics has completely overtaken every aspect of sports, and you'd be a fool to believe that Vegas doesn't depend heavily on it in their linesmaking. This is because the only way to be a successful sports bettor over a long period of time is to have an analytics based system more accurate than the linesmaking system. Vegas knows this and isn't going to allow anybody to have that edge.

If you want to confirm this for yourself you can. There will probably be in the neighborhood of 75 lined CBB games this Saturday. Just buy a subscription to KenPom.com and check out the score projections for this Saturday's games on that site. Match them up with the point spreads and you'll see the vast majority of the lines are within a point of the KenPom projection. There will certainly be exceptions, but again, analytics drives the line.

Way to give away our insanely technical method of predicting these spreads (looking at KP) 

Mt. Sinai - 65
Mt. Zion -  84

The kid wears blue on the outside but is rooting red on the inside.

Well the second half of your prediction is definitely right!

RJ Barrett - 87
Rowan Barrett - 78

Duke builds an early lead.  Mullin gets a T for yelling at the refs. Ponds and LJ lead a good comeback but Clark fouls out and we fall short.  85-78

A close game

What's the over/under on how often the announcers mention that Rowan and JT are father / son.

Johnnies 85
Dukies 83

(I hope!) did it last year..........😉

Trust me, I am quite aware of that. However, with analytics having become much more mainstream in recent years, Vegas has adopted it as the main means of setting a line they believe is best suited to get equal action on both sides. For example, if Vegas blindly throws out a line of Team A -4 when the KenPoms, Sagarins and other CBB analytic sites project Team A to win by 8-10, guess which side the majority of the money is going to flow.

Imagine running a sportsbook and having to post a line on each of the 5 Ohio Valley Conference games that are being played on a given night with the goal of making the line accurate enough to draw close to even action on both sides of every game. Do you think they have some OVC expert projecting what the lines should be, or do they use analytics as the main driver for the opening line? It's the latter.

Analytics has completely overtaken every aspect of sports, and you'd be a fool to believe that Vegas doesn't depend heavily on it in their linesmaking. This is because the only way to be a successful sports bettor over a long period of time is to have an analytics based system more accurate than the linesmaking system. Vegas knows this and isn't going to allow anybody to have that edge.

If you want to confirm this for yourself you can. There will probably be in the neighborhood of 75 lined CBB games this Saturday. Just buy a subscription to KenPom.com and check out the score projections for this Saturday's games on that site. Match them up with the point spreads and you'll see the vast majority of the lines are within a point of the KenPom projection. There will certainly be exceptions, but again, analytics drives the line.

Don’t have a ken Pom subscription. But I have cbs sports line. Their expected scores are very close go the line almost every game . Assuming they use the same stats.

What's the over/under on how often the announcers mention that Rowan and JT are father / son.

A lot