Week 12 NCAA Early Lines Thread

[bills217]

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Can anyone explain why Arkansas is now favored by 10 against Miss. St? Croom and Co. have beat UK on the road (granted we played about the worst we possibly could have) and just beat Bama. Arkansas is an average team at best, despite having McFadden. I was thinking this line would be around Arkansas -3. What am I missing?

[/ QUOTE ]

Mississippi State is a 3.5 win team that's running absurdly hot. They caught UK at the best possible time, with the most possible injuries, and then UK pretty much took a dump. They ran hot at Auburn, and ran hot again this week with a 101-yd INT return at the half to turn a 2-possession deficit into a 1-point lead. They had a whopping 215 yards in victory this week. Their offense is still one of the worst in the country.

Just two weeks ago, Arkansas was favored by 6 against South Carolina (who was favored by 14ish over MSU) and dominated them. Is it really that surprising that they'd be favored by a scant four more against a vastly inferior MSU team? Who, like SC, is stronger against the pass than the run?

Also, I agree that UK +8 is tempting, but like you I'd like to hear more about Little first, and even then it would only be a unit or two for me - UK has just looked awful the past couple weeks and I'm hoping the wind isn't out of their sails after being eliminated from the East race. As a fan I am hoping this will be a bit of a sandwich game between Auburn and GT, but considering we beat them last year and this will be their Senior Day, I don't know how likely that is. I also expect Moreno to slice and dice us, although at least they don't have a running QB.

[aufan91]

MSU +10 vs. Arkansas

Casey Dick is dreadful. Therefore, MSU will donate more defensive players to the run, which will have a better chance to stop McFadden and Jones. Every team should play like this vs. Arkansas.

Vandy +11.5

Earl Bennent=decent receiver. Tennesse pass Defense=Has anyone seen it this year?

Bama -25

I hate taking Bama, but if you're gonna take them, you might as well take them vs. a Lousiana Monroe team.

Boston College +7.5

I believe BC will win this game. If they don't, I think it will be a FG win.

[bills217]

For Kentucky, Rafael Little is supposed to be practicing by the end of the week. Sounds like he will be good to go for Saturday.

[iggymcfly]

[ QUOTE ]
Iggy,

I've been toying with including TO margin in my handicapping lines. What kind of equation are you using for it?

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The simplest equation is just to take the difference between the teams in average turnovers, multiply by 4 points (since that's the average value of a turnover), and then subtract from the team with the better TO margin. For the most part, treating turnovers as 100% luck is much more effective than trying to count them as half skill or even 25% skill.

While basically arguing with a brick wall in SE today though, I was looking over some data, and I think it might be effective to just add between 0.5 points and 1 point to a team that runs the ball a great deal and subtract 0.5 points to 1 point to teams that pass the ball a great deal since those are the key factors for TO margin. Using that adjustment, Oregon would be favored by 18 instead of 16.5 since Oregon is a heavy running team and Arizona is a very heavy passing team.

If you've got a good enough QB, you can adjust for that too, but the only QB in the country that I'd consider worth adjusting for this season is probably Brian Brohm. You need a way above average QB to make it even worth accounting for.

[NajdorfDefense]

I think if you use things like pts per poss, red zone, 3rd and 4th down efficiency, that captures all you need to know about TOs, I wouldn't model them separately.

[iggymcfly]

Well yeah, looking at YPP (probably with the slight adjustment I mentioned for running and passing teams) is just as effective. I don't have any complex models though. I just take the Sagarin ratings and adjust them for turnovers to get a baseline, and then work from there to figure out the effect of injuries, matchups, motivation, etc.

[KUJustin]

iggy, I'm coming at you in 2 threads here (unintentionally). From a purely handicapping perspective, is it really wise to call turnovers 100% luck?

Calling fumbles 100% luck seems iffy. Maybe I'm a square, but in the NFL where you see the same guys for many years at a time against pretty even competition it seems clear that certain guys fumble more than others.

Still, I would accept those being predominantly luck. Suggesting that going from a very good QB to a very bad QB won't affect your TO margin seems extremely counter-intuitive to me.

Finally, I'm curious how you feel about this hypothetical:
Team A +2 TO/gm through 10 gms
Team B -2 TO/gm through 10 gms
Prop Bet: Will Team A or Team B have the better TO margin the rest of the year? They play the same teams going forward. I'm betting on Team A every single time.

I'm totally on-board for discounting the TO margin, but something along the lines of 80% of offensive fumbles are "luck", and 50% of offensive INTs would be a more reasonable spot. I haven't addressed defense, but I would expect some small correlation there as well.

[iggymcfly]

Sure I'd bet Team A at even money, but if you have say Team A who's +10 in turnovers on the year and Team B who's -10, I'll gladly take Team A +0.5 to have more turnovers in the game.

It's not that turnovers are 100% luck, but I'm usually rounding to the nearest half-point and they're enough luck that the actual skill portion would amount to less than a half-point per game. I said there are exceptions (Brohm at L'Ville and Hart and Henne at Michigan are both instances where you should adjust a point or so), but 90% of the time the past turnover data is not significant to future results.

[MyTurn2Raise]

Florida -15000 ML v FAU bet 15u to win 0.1u

yes...I believe Florida wins this well more than 99.34% of the time

[MyTurn2Raise]

POTW: Purdue/Indiana o61.5 bet 2.2u to win 2u