Iggy's Week 5 NCAA Picks

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YTD: 20-26-1, -1.678 units

I did finish up for the year last year with about a 53% winning percentage, so you can probably trust my picks to be very slightly +EV as long as you're not taking bad prices, even with the losing record this year. Also, my 2 unit and larger picks have been running very hot this season.

On to the picks:

Air Force +2.5 at Navy (Risk 2u to win 2.04u)
Really like Air Force here. Or to be more exact, really like betting against Navy. The Middies are still cruising off their reputation last year, but they're nowhere near as good. They only have 3 starters back on defense, and that defense has been miserable this year, giving up 449 yards and 34 points per game vs. Temple, Rutgers, Ball State, and Duke. They're not improving either as they had their worst performance against the Blue Devils last week, giving up 500 yards in a 46-43 victory.

Against three opponents significantly worse than Air Force this year, Navy has won by 11, lost by 3, and won by 3. Meanwhile, Air Force has played surprisingly well. They beat Utah on the road and TCU at home (both much better teams than Navy) before getting blown out by BYU. Based largely on the performance this season, Sagarin says Air Force should be a 2 point favorite, even on the road.

Does Navy at least have favorable matchups to counteract this edge? Not really. It's true that Navy's pass defense has given up a lot more yards than their run defense and Air Force is a running team. However, the run defense has still been plenty bad, giving up 262 yards to Ball State and 210 to Rutgers and ranking 70th in the country despite a weakj schedule.

On the other side of the ball, the matchups are very favorable for Air Force. Navy runs the ball better and passes it worse than anyone in FCS, and run defense has been a strength for Air Force. They rank 28th in the country giving up less than 100 yards per game and their only bad game (against BYU) happened because the Cougars tore them up through the air, passing for 8.9 YPA and only rushing for 3.6 YPA. All in all, I'd say that the matchups are slightly favorable for Air Force and should make them more of a favorite than power ratings would suggest. Not only do I think the wrong team is getting the points here, I think Air Force should probably be favored by 4-6 points. The only reason this is a 2 unit play and not a larger one is that Air Force is kind of an unknown quantity this early in the year, having 1 bad performance after 2 bad ones when they weren't projected to have a very good season, and because I don't trust my mid-major predictions as much as I do for the major conferences I follow more closely.

Note: More picks will be coming later, but I'm not going to list them until I get them completely matched on Matchbook. There's one I've been talking about quite a bit in the early lines thread that will definitely be my POTW though.