PiRate Ratings Elite 8 Spreads

Favorite	Underdog	Spread
Houston	Oregon St.	9.0
Baylor	Arkansas	5.1
Gonzaga	USC	9.3
Michigan	UCLA	6.4

PiRate Ratings Bracketnomics Update

Houston, Baylor, Gonzaga, and Michigan are the four remaining teams that possess the analytics criteria that 93% of the last 30 national champions possessed. Gonzaga and Michigan have the overall best criteria, but most of Michigan’s statistical outcomes includes injured star Isaiah Livers. Houston lacks overall schedule strength, but a win tonight over Oregon State and then a Final Four win over Baylor would give the Cougars the last needed piece of the puzzle in a national title game. Baylor misses on only one main criteria point as well as a couple minor points.

Obviously, the Pac-12 strength of schedules needed to be tweeked upward by a few points, and the Covid issues probably disguised the league’s resurrection. The Big Ten and Big 12 were overrated this year, while the SEC and ACC were somewhat overrated. The fact that the Elite 8 has three Pac-12 teams, and one team each from the Big Ten, Big 12, SEC, West Coast, and American Athletic speaks a lot about the balance in basketball this year. The Western half of the country was the better half this year for the first time in more than a decade, maybe in the 21st Century.

PiRate Ratings College Basketball For January 5, 2020

Power Conference & Top 25 Teams Playing Sunday

 

Home	Visitor	Spread
Saint Joseph’s	Dayton	-18.6
Michigan St.	Michigan	7.4
Xavier	St. John’s	6.9
Colorado	Oregon St.	8.5
Minnesota	Northwestern	11.0
Illinois	Purdue	-0.2
Washington	USC	4.3

PiRate Ratings Money Line Parlay Picks–September 1-5, 2016

This just for fun weekly feature turned out to be our most widely read part of the PiRate Ratings last year, because just like a broken clock is correct twice a day, somehow our money line parlays returned 40% on investment last year. People began leaving comments at our sister site, http://www.piratings.webs.com , telling us they were using these picks to wager their hard-earned money. That disappointed us a lot, since we begged them not to do this.

This is a just for fun mathematical experiment. We have no inside information; we have no specialist in Vegas placing wagers anonymously for us like other heavy hitters. In fact, if we were to announce to any book that we would like to play our picks for real, they would bend over backwards to help us do just that. So, that should tell you not to use these picks. Just read what we have to offer. If there is some way to wager just for fun with your friends, by picking X number of teams to win outright, then maybe you can use our selections.

For those not aware of the Money Line, it is a line established to wager on who you think will win the game without having to cover a pointspread. Obviously, if Michigan plays Hawaii, you would take Michigan to win. As Lee Corso says, “Not so fast my friend.” In order to take Michigan to win the game outright over Hawaii, you have to give ridiculous odds to the book. To win just $100 on this proposal, you must put up $75,000! If you want to wager just $100 on Hawaii to win the game in the biggest upset in years, you would win $25,000 if it happened!

Obviously, this is an extreme outlier. Let’s look at a closer game this week. Vanderbilt hosts South Carolina tomorrow night. The current Money Line odds are listed as Vanderbilt -185 and South Carolina +165. This means that if you believe the Commodores will win, you must put up $185 to win $100 ($285, because you get your investment money back as well). If you believe South Carolina will win this game, then by wagering $100, you stand to win $165 ($265 as you will get your $100 back as well if you win) if the Gamecocks win.

A Money Line parlay allows you to combine multiple games in order to raise your total odds. The catch is that if you bet X amount of games as one parlay wager, all X teams must win. It is considered a sucker bet to play this type of exotic wager, but we are not suckers, because we bet $0 every week. We can choose and choose parlays every week, and we will not lose a penny. We hope you will not either.

Here is our plan of attack that worked rather well last year for us. We will select a host of favorites and bunch them into parlays where the odds are better than even money for us should we win the wager. For example, let’s say that you combine three favorites into one parlay wager. Team A is listed at -250. Team B is listed at -235. Team C is listed at -225. The parlay on this three-team wager would be +188, or you would put up $100 to win $188 ($288 because as you know by now, when you win, you get back your investment money as well.)

It is not easy for three teams at -250, -235, and -225 to all win in a given week. That’s the catch. It looks so easy, and there are some nice hotels in Vegas that have been built from funds donated to them by suckers that thought it looked so easy.

Okay, now that you have been warned, let’s get started with our first Money Line Parlays of the 2016 season. We are playing just two parlays this week, and by playing, we mean like it is Monopoly–it is just a fun game.

Parlay #1

This one gives us +167 odds on our $100 fantasy investment. Yep, if we win, we receive $267 from the fake book in fake Vegas.

Tulsa over San Jose St.
Wake Forest over Tulane
LSU over Wisconsin
West Virginia over Missouri

Parlay #2

This one gives us +127 odds on our $100 fantasy investment. So, if we win just one of these two parlays, it will be a profitable week.

Colorado over Colorado St.
Temple over Army
UTEP over New Mexico St.
Minnesota over Oregon St.

Okay, that’s $200 fake invested funds into two parlays. If we lose both, we are out our imaginary $200. If we win #1 and lose #2, we will have a nice profit in week one returning $267 on the $200 wagered (33.5% ROI). If we lose #1 and win #2, we will have a so-so profit in week one returning $227 on the $200 wagered (13.5% ROI). If somehow both parlays win, we will be taking a fake vacation to an imaginary mountain lodge after pulling off a return of $494 on the $200 wagered (147% ROI).

One final warning and plea–please do not wager real money on these picks. Use them for fun only. See if you can come up with your own and see for yourself how easy hard it is.

Happy football holiday weekend.

PiRate Ratings College Basketball Preview For February 20-21, 2016

They are in the stretch.  In less than two weeks, the first conference tournaments will begin, and three weeks from Sunday, we will know which 68 teams will play meaningful games into the third week of March.

Before we look at this weekend’s Red, White, and Blue ratings’ selections, let’s take a closer look at “The Bubble.”

As of today, we estimate that 24 teams are currently part of “The Bubble.”  Of those 24 teams, 14 of them are currently listed as “in the Dance,” and 10 are listed as NIT-Bound.

There is a catch here.  The good side of The Bubble tends to shrink as conference tournament play continues.  Whereas some teams play their way onto The Bubble and into the discussion, the number of available places for Bubble teams shrinks when a team not in the discussion gets hot and wins an automatic bid, reducing the number of spots for teams in the gray area.

As a for instance, let’s say that North Carolina State upsets three teams and wins the ACC Tournament this year.  The Wolf Pack would obviously receive an automatic bid, while the other big ACC teams already considered in the field but not as a Bubble team also receive bids.  This causes one Bubble team that is listed as in to be bumped to see their bubble burst.

Here is a look at our 24 Bubblers, showing which 14 would be drinking at the Dance bubbler today.

If you don’t know what a bubbler is, ask somebody from Wisconsin.

Team	Conf.	Overall	RPI	Vs. T50	Vs.T100	Rd RPI	L12	Seed	Weekend
Connnecticut	9-4	19-7	36	3-3	7-7	21	9-3	7	at Cincinnati
Providence	7-7	19-8	37	2-5	8-5	13	5-7	7	OFF
Syracuse	8-6	18-9	39	5-6	7-8	43	8-4	8	vs. Pitt.
Colorado	8-6	19-8	33	3-7	7-8	38	7-5	8	at UCLA
Pittsburgh	7-6	18-7	41	2-5	5-7	5	6-6	9	at Syracuse
Wisconsin	8-5	16-10	48	4-5	8-6	24	8-4	9	vs. Illinois
Seton Hall	8-5	18-7	44	1-4	7-7	41	7-5	10	at St. John’s
Michigan	9-5	19-8	54	1-3	8-8	42	7-5	10	at Maryland
Oregon St.	6-7	15-9	32	6-5	8-9	60	5-7	10	at Oregon
Texas Tech	6-7	16-9	28	5-7	7-8	61	5-7	11	at Okla. St.
Cincinnati	9-5	19-8	60	3-4	5-7	34	8-4	12	Vs. U Conn
Temple	10-3	16-9	66	4-5	6-7	96	9-3	12	at Houston
Butler	7-7	18-8	58	2-6	6-7	28	7-5	12	at Villanova
Alabama	7-6	16-9	30	4-5	7-8	35	7-5	12	vs. Miss. St.
Tulsa	9-5	17-9	45	2-4	6-8	55	9-3	1st out	at Cent. Fla.
Clemson	9-5	16-10	89	5-5	7-7	99	8-4	2nd out	vs. N. C. St.
Saint Mary’s	12-3	21-4	67	0-1	4-2	97	9-3	3rd out	at Gonzaga
Florida St.	6-8	16-10	61	2-7	7-10	68	6-6	4th out	at Va. Tech
LSU	9-4	16-10	81	3-5	6-7	50	7-5	5th out	at Tennessee
Vanderbilt	7-6	15-11	62	3-7	4-9	75	7-5	6th out	vs. Georgia
St. Bonaventure	9-4	17-7	49	2-2	4-5	71	8-4	7th out	at Dayton
Geo. Washington	8-5	19-7	46	2-3	4-4	76	7-5	8th out	at U Mass
Creighton	8-6	17-10	83	2-6	4-9	77	7-5	9th out	OFF
Washington	7-7	15-11	73	5-5	10-12	53	5-7	10thout	vs. Stanford

 

Games Scheduled for:	Saturday, February 20, 2016
Home	Visitor	Red	White	Blue
Louisville	Duke	3	4	6
North Carolina	Miami (Fla.)	6	6	3
Syracuse	Pittsburgh	6	5	7
Virginia Tech	Florida St.	-3	-3	-5
Clemson	North Carolina St.	4	5	2
Georgia Tech	Notre Dame	-2	-1	-4
Texas	Baylor	5	6	5
West Virginia	Oklahoma	4	4	6
Kansas St.	Kansas	-5	-2	-7
Iowa St.	TCU	17	18	15
Oklahoma St.	Texas Tech	-1	-2	-2
Georgetown	Xavier	-4	-3	-8
DePaul	Marquette	-2	-5	-3
Villanova	Butler	11	10	12
Rutgers	Penn St.	-6	-7	-4
Nebraska	Ohio St.	3	1	2
Indiana	Purdue	5	3	6
Washington	Stanford	7	7	8
Oregon	Oregon St.	10	8	11
UCLA	Colorado	5	3	2
South Carolina	Florida	2	2	3
Vanderbilt	Georgia	8	6	3
Alabama	Mississippi St.	6	6	7
Auburn	Ole Miss	-4	-5	-3
Tennessee	LSU	1	1	3
Texas A&M	Kentucky	1	3	-3
Arkansas	Missouri	10	10	8
Gonzaga	Saint Mary’s	6	6	6

 

Games Scheduled for:	Sunday, February 21, 2016
Home	Visitor	Red	White	Blue
Wake Forest	Boston College	9	10	8
St. John’s	Seton Hall	-12	-14	-15
Maryland	Michigan	3	8	9
Wisconsin	Illinois	11	11	10
USC	Utah	6	6	5
Washington St.	California	-9	-10	-6