BetIQ Daily: Saturday College Basketball Spread Picks and Futures Plays

Saturday picks in BetIQ include a Sun Belt game, Providence vs. DePaul, and several conference and Final Four futures plays.

February 12, 2022 - by Jason Lisk

Baylor should be on the rebound and a value play soon (Scott Winters/Icon Sportswire)

BetIQ is ready for another full Saturday of college basketball action.

We’re also looking ahead to March with more college basketball futures, including three Final Four value plays.

1) Georgia State -1

  • NCAAB Spread Pick
  • at Appalachian State, Saturday at 4:00 p.m. ET
  • This is not a model pick, though it is close to playable by our models at 52.0 percent to cover.
  • The Panthers were one of our picks Thursday, and they won by 11 on the road at Coastal Carolina as a 1.5-point favorite (that opened as an underdog).
  • Our predictive ratings have Appalachian State at 68 percent. Over last nine days, when the predictive rating model is 66 percent or higher, that team is 1-5 ATS.
  • That means the full-season predictive ratings are off for some reason, and looking at shorter-term data is leading to value.
  • Georgia State was the preseason Sun Belt favorite but was 6-9 overall and 0-4 in conference three weeks ago.
  • Over the last five games, the Panthers have looked more like the team expected to compete for the conference title.
  • Center Eliel Nsoseme had missed every game until January and was returning from a knee injury.
  • Without him, they were one of the smallest lineups in Division I and were struggling on the glass, but they now have multiple starters over 6’8″.
  • We’ll ride the recent streak and stay on the Panthers to continue to play better.

2) DePaul +9.5

  • NCAAB Spread Pick
  • at Providence, Saturday at 6:30 p.m. ET on FS1
  • Providence is 20-2, but no major team has a bigger divide between rank/record and power rating.
  • Providence is No. 11 in AP poll and No. 43 in our predictive ratings.
  • Friars are 11-0 in games decided by eight points or less (more than half their wins), while both losses were by at least 18 points.
  • Next game up for Providence is key matchup with Villanova at top of Big East standings on Tuesday.
  • DePaul sophomore point guard Jalen Terry moved into starting lineup on Jan. 11 and is coming off two good games in wins against Georgetown and Xavier.

3) St. Francis (NY) -2

  • NCAAB Spread Pick
  • at Central Connecticut, Saturday at 1:00 p.m. ET
  • This is our top model pick for Saturday at 57 percent cover odds, according to our Ensemble Forecast model.
  • Central Connecticut has shot 50 percent from three-point range but only 46.9 percent overall in the last two games—both of which were wins—a regression factor our models are likely picking up.
  • St. Francis, meanwhile, has shot 9-of-48 from deep in the last two close losses, one in OT and one by five at Long Island U.

More College Basketball Conference Futures

We’ve included several college basketball futures in past BetIQ Daily articles. Most of those are at good prices now, as the odds on the teams have improved. That includes Purdue going from +330 to +135 to win the Big Ten, Arizona going from +110 to over -300 in most places to win the Pac-12, and Kentucky at +400 to make the Final Four (now +185).

While most of the conference odds have sharpened up as we approach the last month of the season, we found a few smaller conference plays we like at FanDuel Sportsbook, on some conferences that weren’t available elsewhere.

UAB -130 to Win Conference USA

  • UAB has already won at North Texas, the second-favorite to win the conference, and it has a return game in Birmingham next Saturday.
  • North Texas is currently ahead of UAB by one game in the standings, which makes that game a huge one for the regular-season top seed.
  • UAB is rated higher predictively and has a higher expected win total in all other games.
  • Our projections have UAB at nearly 67 percent to win the regular-season conference title.

Toledo to Win MAC

  • The MAC is currently temporarily off because of a conference game played last night (the books usually pull the conference props each night during and after games and re-open mid-morning, but after publication time).
  • The most recent Toledo-to-win line yesterday afternoon was -210, and the game last night (between Kent State and Akron) should not have shifted much.
  • Our projections have Toledo at 75.6 percent to win the MAC.
  • If this conference opens back up today, we see good value on Toledo up to around -270.
  • Toledo is even in the standings with Ohio, but already swept the Bobcats head-to-head and would have the tiebreaker.

Baylor (+300), Villanova (+650) and LSU (+1500) to reach Final Four

We already had futures Final Four picks on Arizona, Kentucky, and Illinois, and two of those (Arizona and Kentucky) have improved significantly. They are now the second- and third-favorites behind Gonzaga, with double the market odds from when we published the respective recommendations.

So we are adding a few more +EV picks now.

  • We talked about Baylor and LSU’s future value coming off a stretch of key injuries lowering their overall numbers but providing value in Thursday’s article.
  • We’ll add those as formal Final Four prices to buy now.
  • Villanova is +650 to reach the Final Four, but we project the Wildcats to have a 19 percent chance of making it right now.

Top Pick Performance Trends

Our algorithmic models use over a decade of data to predict every game across five sports.

As of post time, here are some 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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