March 11th, 2009 Picks

Well 3-1-0 day yesterday, and the Jazz won in Indiana so pretty sweet day overall. Utah plays in Atlanta tonight, and it would be surprising to me if they got their 13th straight win. Anyways, DePaul upset Cincinnati and they stopped fouling and scoring just in the nick of time to go under. Summers had foul trouble early and Horne won by bunches, Real Madrid looked like a team that had been relegated once or twice as Liverpool won the match 4-0, Bayern Munich put down more of the same in winning 7-1 of Sporting Lisbon, and Rutgers and Notre Dame had trouble scoring most of the game with 111 total points.

The Capitals came back to beat Nashville 2-1 in overtime, the Knicks and Larry Hughes especially played well enough to beat Milwaukee, and North Dakota State won by virtue of having the greater three point percentage. St. Louis held a 3 goal lead over Dallas and won 5-2, Butler and Cleveland State turned up the pressure early and scored only 111, and Slaughter scored more regularly throughout the game in a winning effort against South Alabama and Tilford. Hawaii could only play their game for about 25 minutes and used the last 15 minutes to slip and fall with Fresno State winning by four. So on the picks already, naja?

1) DePaul vs. Providence – 147 points or fewer
2) Baylor vs. Nebraska – Nebraska
3) Paris Horne vs. Wesley Matthews – Matthews pts.
4) Dwight Thorne II points vs. Texas winning margin – Thorne II pts.
5) Inter Milan team goals vs. Rooney and Ronaldo goals – Inter Milan team goals
6) Lyon @ Barcelona – 2 goals or fewer
7) Miguel Cabrera vs. David Wright – Cabrera records more total bases
8) Iowa State vs. Oklahoma State – 147 points or more
9) West Virginia win margin vs. Ayers and McAlarney threes – West Virginia win margin
10) Kobe Bryant pts. @ Houston: 29 or less vs. 30 or more – 29 or less
11) Mount St. Mary’s vs. Robert Morris – Mount St. Mary’s scores more threes
12) Vancouver Canucks @ Anaheim Ducks – Vancouver
13) Oregon vs. Washington State – 123 points or more

Analysis
1) Not really going on much here except that Providence and DePaul combined for 116 points the last time they played. DePaul had a pretty bad shooting night in that game, but the Friars shot around 40% on field goals, over 33% on threes and 5 of 10 on free throws. The game went under because of the small number of possessions, however, not because of remarkly abysmal shooting. Unless DePaul gets drawn into playing much faster than they have all season, this should go under, as both teams would have to shoot 55%-60% on an ‘average’ number of possessions to go over.
Confidence: W3 streak or less

3) Matthews wasn’t needed to score much against St. John’s earlier in the season, but now that Dominic James is hurt they’ll need Matthews to score as much as ever. The Marquette defense should do a good job of disrupting Paris Horne who is already a fairly low percentage shooter compared to many scorers. Matthews shoots 12.2 field goals per game lately, Horne shoots 14.3. Matthews averages 1.63 points per shot, and Horne averages 1.18. Horne won this prop in the regular season 23-9, but he shot 60% on threes and over 50% from the field, which he has not been able to do often.
Confidence: W3 streak or less

4) This is a risky pick to take, but Dwight Thorne II, being a 41% three point shooter and 48.6% from the field has the capability to put a lot of points up. He’s been struggling lately, taking no more than 6 shots in his last four games. He will score around ten points most likely, but could score over 25. Texas is favored by 14 points. How many conference tournament games have been blowouts?
Confidence: W1 or less

8) Iowa State and Oklahoma State are fairly fast paced teams for the Big 12, Iowa averaging 54 shots per game and Oklahoma State averaging 59 shots. Combined the two average 45 three point attempts, and 17 three pointers scored and about 28 free throws made. They would have to make 50% of their remaining field goals to go over. In their previous game they scored 153 despite taking fewer field goals. They shot 45 free throws and 44 three pointers, and that is what put them over. In conference Iowa State’s games have gone over 4 of 16 times, and Oklahoma State’s games have gone over 11 of 16 times.
Confidence: W2 or less

9) West Virginia plays a tough man to man defense. That should make it difficult for Notre Dame to find a man open by passing the ball around the top of the key or by driving inside and then kicking the ball back out. In previous Big East games Notre Dame have been reluctant to shoot three pointers when they are covered, McAlarney in particular. I think Notre Dame will need to win the game outright for Ayers and McAlarney to win this prop, and they definitely could, but I think West Virginia will rebound from the loss to Louisville and win fairly easily.
Confidence: W3 streak or less

10) Kobe Bryant can be a deadly shooter and when he gets hot there is nobody in the league that can stop him. Still, after winning so many games with the Lakers by getting his teammates involved in offense, and after losing so badly to Portland after taking 28 shots (and scoring under 30) I can see Kobe limiting his role on offense for this game. The Houston Rockets will have Artest guarding Bryant and are one of the toughest teams on defense in the NBA. Barring an MVP performance from Kobe I think he will score under 30.
UPDATE: OK, my mistake. Shane Battier is the primary defender on Kobe. Battier is no slouch, however, and I would expect Artest to play some help defense on Kobe, or to switch on to him on screens. I still like 29 points or less.
UPDATE2: Odom will be out with suspension but his backup, Josh Powell, has outscored Odom in three of their past five games and in fewer minutes. I think he will more than make up for Odom’s absence.
Confidence: W4 streak or less

11) So Robert Morris has Mount St. Mary’s beat in every category of stat one might look at to choose this kind of prop. They shoot a higher percentage of threes, they take more threes, so not surprisingly they make more threes, and they have more high percentage (over 39%) three point shooters than Mount St. Mary’s does. So it was kind of weird when I saw Robert Morris had lost this prop to them both times they’d played earlier in the year. In a close game that Robert Morris eventually won they took only four threes and made 2 while Mount St. Mary’s made 3 of 10. In the other game Robert Morris also won the game but lost the prop 6 to 3. Robert Morris made 3 of 8 threes when they were losing and 0 of 3 threes after they had the lead. Mount St. Mary’s was shooting threes whether or not they had the lead and ended up shooting 16 threes. Robert Morris has shot many threes against other teams with the lead, maybe Mount St. Mary’s has a difficult time stopping Robert Morris’ interior scoring.
Confidence: W2 streak or less

13) Oregon and Washington State combined for 105 points in their regular season game at Washington State. Oregon had 18 minutes in which they scored zero points. I don’t think Oregon will remain scoreless for nearly a half in this game. In their game at Oregon they combined for 136 points and Oregon only had three completely flat minutes.
Confidence: W4 or less