BetIQ Daily: Magic vs. Pacers, Sun Belt Conference Tourney Pick, and Staff Betting Picks for March

Wednesday's BetIQ Daily highlights our staff betting picks for conference tourneys, and also has an NBA pick on the Magic and Pacers.

March 2, 2022 - by Jason Lisk

Cole Anthony and the Magic will try to beat the Pacers twice this week (Melissa Tamez/Icon Sportswire)

March Madness is officially here at BetIQ Daily, and we are ready for the action.

We continue today with a NBA trend pick, and announce that our staff betting picks for March Madness are live. We also throw in a couple of the picks from today, including a Sun Belt Conference future.

1) Magic -1

  • NBA Spread Pick
  • vs. Indiana Pacers, Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. ET.
  • We are continuing to play on the trend that when our predictive ratings model is “off” the spread substantially, there’s value going against the season-long numbers.
  • The reasons are usually related to other factors like player participation, injuries, and things not captured by the full-season stats.
  • Indiana was very active ahead of the trade deadline, including trading away its best player so far this season, Domantas Sabonis.
  • The Pacers’ current lineup is far different from the one that the season-long numbers are based on, and they’re still without center Myles Turner.
  • Orlando just won two nights ago against Indiana by 16 points as a 2.5-point favorite (though Indiana was playing a back-to-back, accounting for the line difference).

Staff Conference Championship Week Betting Picks are Live

For betting subscribers, our Staff Betting Picks are now live.

New picks will be added daily, and it will include both individual game picks and conference tournament champion futures over the next two weeks. Today, we already have a game pick for tonight (with others possibly coming) and two conference tourney futures picks.

For our BetIQ Daily readers, we’ll tease one of them right here, with a familiar team that we rode to a 3-0 ATS record on spread picks in the last month: Georgia State in the Sun Belt.

Conference Tourney Pick: Georgia State to Win Sun Belt Conference (+400)

  • Best odds available at release time are at BetMGM (+400) and DraftKings (+350).
  • This pick is playable down to +250.
  • By full-season ratings, our projections give Georgia State an 18 percent chance of winning the conference tournament.
  • However, Georgia State was the preseason favorite and battled injuries and inconsistency early. Since center Elie Nsoseme moved into the starting lineup after returning from injury, the team is playing about five points better than previous games without him.
  • Georgia State surged from an 0-4 conference start to finish in third place at 9-5 and has looked like the best Sun Belt team for last five weeks.

Top Pick Performance Trends

Our college basketball spread picks listed in BetIQ Daily went 19-13 in the month of February. ATS college basketball picks rated as playable with 55.0% confidence are 11-5 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:

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