BetIQ Daily: SEC and Mountain West Tourney Picks and a NCAA Futures Pick

Friday's BetIQ Daily has some conference tournament picks and a NCAA Tournament futures pick on an ACC bubble team.

Hassan Diarra and Texas A&M will try to add one more big win against Auburn (Peter Joneleit/Icon Sportswire)

We continue posting for subscribers in our staff betting picks for conference championships. We’re up to 16-10 on resolved bets for +7.1 units entering today, with all the tournament futures picks at + odds still in play entering the day.

We have five more game picks so far today that are live, and a futures pick. We’ll give you a couple of them here at BetIQ Daily, but if you want all our tournament picks, please become a betting picks subscriber.

1) Texas A&M +9.5 (vs. Auburn)

  • Best odds available at release time are at DraftKings +9.5 (-105).
  • Game at 12:00 p.m. ET on ESPN.
  • This is a play based on WOWY (With or Without You) analysis and team trends.
  • Texas A&M has won six of its last seven games to get into NCAA Tournament contention after a dismal stretch where it lost eight in a row.
  • This recent run corresponds with point guard Marcus Williams taking an indefinite leave of absence, shortly after he scored zero points in the previous game at Vanderbilt and saw his minutes reduced.
  • Williams was Texas A&M’s least efficient offensive starter, with a high turnover rate and poor shooting numbers, and the team has played its best ball without him.
  • Texas A&M has put up three of its best performances of the year in the last five games.
  • Auburn has played much better at home than on the road this year, and closed 1-3 in its last four games away from home, with the win coming in OT.

2) Boise State -2.5 (vs. Wyoming)

  • Best odds available at release time are at DraftKings and FanDuel -2.5 (-110).
  • Game at 9:30 p.m. ET on CBS Sports Network.
  • This is both an Ensemble Forecast model pick (54.7 percent to cover) and a pick based on team trends analysis.
  • Wyoming covered narrowly yesterday against UNLV, and it took UNLV going 3-for-21 from three-point range, the worst shooting performance from outside against Wyoming all year, to get it done.
  • Wyoming has been trending downward since a hot November start.
  • Boise State has gone the other direction, picking up after a 3-4 start and a lineup change.

3) Wake Forest to Miss NCAA Tournament (+102)

  • This prop is available at FanDuel at release time.
  • Wake Forest lost in the ACC opener to Boston College on Wednesday, so this will simply come down to an evaluation of its chances with no other intervening results.
  • Wake Forest dropped to 45 in the NET rankings.
  • Wake Forest has a losing record against the top two Quadrants (5-7) entering Selection Sunday, and has only one win over a team projected in the field (North Carolina, at home).
  • The Demon Deacons also played one of the weakest non-conference schedules among major programs.
  • A review of Bart Torvik’s similar teams by resume shows that the majority of teams like Wake Forest missed the tournament.
  • Our own review also shows that when major conference teams ranked in the Top 50 by RPI/NET get “snubbed,” it’s almost always because they have few top quality wins and a losing record against the top two tiers of teams, and/or played a weak non-conference schedule.

Recap: Conference Futures and Final Four Futures

Back in January, we gave out several conference regular-season winner futures, as well as some Final Four odds to jump on.

Our regular-season conference champs ended up going 4-3 for +0.9 units (if you bet the same unit on each pick). The three losses missed out because of (a) a banked-in three-point shot to decide it (Wisconsin vs. Purdue) (b) another buzzer-beating three-point shot (North Texas vs. UAB) and (c) Providence not having to make up three games lost to COVID-19, allowing it to get the top seed in the Big East over Villanova on win percentage despite getting swept by the Wildcats.

The four wins were: Arizona (Pac-12), Davidson (Atlantic-10), Toledo (MAC), and Boise State (MWC), with three of those at + odds at the time of the pick.

Meanwhile, we made several Final Four plays:

  • Arizona to make FF (+380)
  • Kentucky to make FF (+400)
  • Baylor to make FF (+300)
  • Illinois to make FF (+550)
  • LSU to make FF (+1500)

While we won’t know the outcome of those until the Final Four arrives, we do have excellent Selection Sunday value compared to the lines that you would get now. Arizona and Kentucky are now both at about +150 in the markets to reach the Final Four, Baylor has moved downward as well, and Illinois and LSU are holding steady until we see the specific brackets.

What’s To Come

Selection Sunday is just two days away. We are updating our bracketology breakdown, and you can see who we have in the field heading into today’s action.

If you are in an NCAA Tournament bracket pool, you can sign up now to get customized bracket picks with NCAA Bracket Picks 2022. We’ve also expanded our offerings and added tools for both March Madness Survivor Pools and Calcutta Pools. We will also continue Staff Picks forward with an NCAA Tournament edition.

Top Pick Performance Trends

Our college basketball spread picks listed in BetIQ Daily went 19-13 in the month of February, and staff picks are now 16-10 in March as well. ATS college basketball picks rated as playable with 55.0% confidence are 18-8 since the start of February.

As of post time, here are some other highlights of prediction performance from our primary Ensemble Forecast model this season for playable-rated picks (52.5% confidence or better) against game-day betting lines:

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