Welcome to Conference Tournament Week! The Power 6 tournaments haven’t even begun and we’ve already had one of the wildest college basketball weeks in recent memory with countless buzzer beaters, comebacks, and massive tournament implications. In this article, we will break down the current landscape in college hoops by looking at the teams that have already secured those precious bids into the big dance, in addition to the teams that were the luckiest/unluckiest over the past 7 days. Let’s get into it!
ShotQuality Bets Model Recap
The ShotQuality Bets model had an incredible week, hitting at a 55% clip across 227 spread and total plays, good enough for 12.9 units. On the season, our model is up a whopping 122.3 units, hitting at a 53.7% rate on over 4,000 plays. Our pick history is tracked publicly and can be accessed here. We’ve reached the college basketball postseason and there is nothing like betting and winning in March. Start growing your bankroll with a model subscription, which can be purchased on the ShotQuality Bets Website.
Teams that are Going Dancing
Five teams are locked into the March Madness field after winning their conference tournaments*
None of these teams have the profile of a team poised to make a deep run in the NCAA tournament but Drake looks like the best of the group and has a real chance of winning a game in the tournament, although they have been fairly lucky according to ShotQuality expected results. Both Kennesaw St. and UNC Asheville are teams that we view as overvalued and aren’t optimistic about their chances against elite teams. Our data had been high on Fairleigh Dickinson relative to actual outcomes all season and positive regression hit at exactly the right time. That being said, it would be an incredible surprise if they made it past their first game next weekend.
Luckiest Teams ATS this Past Week
Many Power 6 teams were lucky to perform well ATS in the final week of the regular season. Namely, UConn, Creighton, Florida, and Vanderbilt went 2-0 ATS when our data expected them to go 0-2. Interestingly, we have been high on a couple of those teams all year and noted how they were suffering from negative variance so it’s somewhat satisfying to see their luck even out down the stretch.
Let’s focus on Uconn who experienced some good luck in Big East play last week.
On Wednesday, the Huskies blew out DePaul and easily covered a massive 17.5 point spread. However, the ShotQuality expected score had this as a much closer game which would have resulted in the Huskies failing to cover. The more important deviation from expected results came on Saturday against Villanova where UConn was expected to lose the game outright but instead won by 11 and covered a small spread. Although they were lucky to go 2-0 this week, our data still views this Huskies team as a real threat to win both the Big East Tournament and the National Championship as we have them ranked 4th overall in Adjusted SQ Net Rating. UConn has a bye in the first round of the Big East Tournament and will face off against Providence in the Quarterfinals on Thursday.
Unluckiest Teams ATS this Past Week
Unfortunately, for every team that’s lucky to cover ATS, there has to be an unlucky team that fails to cover. This week, the squads that suffered that fate to an extreme degree were Alabama, DePaul, and Oregon State.
We have frequently talked about Alabama as a team that’s been lucky both ATS and straight-up but the opposite was true this past week.
In their game against rivals Auburn on Wednesday, ‘Bama underperformed their expected score which resulted in an unlucky loss ATS, although they were still able to win outright. On Saturday, Roll Tide suffered from significant negative variance and lost a game at Texas A&M that they should have won based on the shots they took/allowed. It’s been an incredible season for Nate Oats’ team, who won the SEC regular season title and rank 3rd in Adjusted SQ Net Rating. Alabama is the number one seed in the SEC tournament and will play in the Quarterfinals on Friday.
That’s all for the SQ Bets Weekly Primer! To get all of our plays for the incredible week ahead of us, subscribe to ShotQuality Bets for just $19.95.
Best of luck this week and we’ll see you next Monday to break down all of the week’s action and preview the event we’ve all been waiting for: March Madness.
About the Author
Daniel Galper is a sophomore student at the University of Michigan studying Data Analytics and Statistics. He currently works for ShotQuality as a Data Science Intern and mainly creates data visualization content for social media. Using both the ShotQuality Bets Model and his own models, Daniel has beaten the college basketball market over a large sample size. In his free time, Daniel likes to play FIFA, paddleboard, and watch basketball.