BetIQ Daily: Missouri Valley Tournament Pick, Mountain West Play, and a Rutgers Futures Picks

Saturday's BetIQ Daily goes to Arch Madness for Drake vs. Missouri State, adds a Rutgers future play, and has a pick in Fresno-Wyoming.

Drake is looking for some Missouri Valley Bling (Chris Kohley/Icon Sportswire)

We’re continuing to post more picks for subscribers in our staff betting picks for conference championships, including five game picks and two more futures picks on the NCAA Tournament that were posted this morning. We’ll highlight a couple of those picks in BetIQ Daily today.

So far, our spread picks posted there are 4-2, including wins with Drake and Kent State last night. We also have several futures we like, and two conference tournament futures picks are in semifinal action today to reach the tournament final.

1) Drake +1.5 (vs. Missouri State)

  • Best odds available at release time are at DraftKings +1.5 (-110)
  • Game at 6:00 p.m. ET on CBS Sports Network.
  • We were on Drake in the quarterfinal based on our lineup analysis and recent trends, and we will continue that with the semifinal matchup against Missouri State.
  • Missouri State is the better-shooting team, but Drake has the advantage at rebounding and in creating turnovers, and it has been playing better on offense in recent stretch with current lineup.
  • ShanQuan Hemphill was Drake’s leading scorer on last year’s tourney team before he broke his foot and missed the final month. He was still dealing with that injury, took several games off in January and then came off the bench. But he just had his best game of year (19 points, 10 rebounds) in the quarterfinal, and he has played 72 minutes in last two games.
  • Missouri State won both regular-season matchups in close games, but Drake went a combined 4-for-31 from three-point range in those matchups, two of its worst outside-shooting games of the year.

2) Fresno State +3.5 (at Wyoming)

  • Best odds available at release time are at BetMGM and DraftKings +3.5 (-110)
  • Game at 4:00 p.m. ET.
  • This is a playable model pick, according to our Ensemble Forecast Model, and also a play based on our team analysis.
  • Wyoming is trending the wrong direction, as it had an average Game Score of 12.3 in first 15 games and 6.1 in last 15.
  • Four of Wyoming’s seven worst opponent-adjusted Game Scores have come in the last three weeks.
  • Wyoming is largely a two-man team on offense relying on Hunter Maldonado and center Graham Ike for offense, and it does not shoot many threes.
  • The Cowboys have shot under 50 percent from two-point range in four of their last six games (all losses) after doing so only twice in first 24 games.
  • Fresno State has the size in frontcourt with 7-footer Orlando Robinson to deal with Ike in the paint, and rates as a good defensive team all around.

3) Rutgers to Make NCAA Tournament (+140)

  • This prop is available at DraftKings at release time.
  • Our playable break-even price is Rutgers -250 to make tourney.
  • Rutgers is likely being given these odds based on its NET ranking (76).
  • However, the committee selects and seeds primarily based on wins and results against the top two “quads,” where Rutgers is 9-9, including six wins against the top quadrant.
  • The majority of teams like Rutgers by NET ranking and top results made tournament, including several “surprises” on Selection Sunday.
  • If Rutgers beats Penn State at home on Sunday, it will be 18-12 overall and 12-8 in Big Ten play.
  • The Scarlet Knights have been playing like a tournament team since January 1, as they started 5-5 but are 12-7 since then.

What’s To Come

We’ll have more staff betting picks for conference championships tomorrow, and Monday will be a big day with the college basketball regular season closing tomorrow. We’ll have a full bracketology breakdown update after the Sunday games, and we will also be digging into all of the conference tournament futures once the brackets are set.

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 4-2 in March as well. ATS college basketball picks rated as playable with 55.0% confidence are 14-5 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:

Get notified when new BetIQ Daily posts are published: