Well, it's Martin Luther King Day, which means some matinee hoops in both the NCAA and NBA, although the full slate of college games is not that extensive. We also have the first-ever expanded College Football Playoff championship game tonight as heavy favorite Ohio State takes on Notre Dame. With two storied blue-blood programs squaring off for the title at 7:30 p.m. EST in Atlanta, the cheapest ticket in the building is going for $3,200. So, whether you love the format, hate it or just want it tweaked a little, you'd have to say that this year's inaugural tournament has been a success. Two teams that wouldn't have even been invited in previous years are squaring off for the championship tonight, and that is enough for most people to conclude that at the very least this was a step in the right direction.
Whether the tournament needs more teams or maybe should contract by a few is a debate for another time, but at the end of the day, tonight's game features two brand names with storied histories and should draw a record number of broadcast viewers. That means it's not going away, and the odds are that more teams will be invited going forward.
Enough on that, as this is our daily basketball page, but since that is the only game in town on the football side of things, we may have a recommended pick for that game to post below. We'll see.
Hoops Highlights
As for the hoops, today's games feature mainly mid-major programs and leagues, but there are a couple of big-name matchups as Georgetown travels to Villanova for a Big East matchup and Penn State hosts Rutgers in the Big Ten.
The Hoyas have been struggling of late after a surprising start to their season, but they've also encountered a rough patch of their schedule that included St. John's, Marquette and UConn - all losses - followed by a bad loss to DePaul at home in a sandwich game Saturday.
Villanova's season has been a roller-coaster ride; they were terrible early, got it together to record wins against Seton Hall, Butler, Connecticut and DePaul, before losing two of their last three. They did knock off Providence, by two as 9.5-point favorites Jan. 17 in their most recent outing, and are somehow favored by 9 at home tonight. Seems like that might be a few too many points.
Rutgers entered the season as a darkhorse pick by many to surprise in the Big Ten and likely earn a spot in the NCAA Tournament. Like Villanova, though, the ride has been bumpy for the Scarlet Knights. They come into tonight's contest with an overall record of 10-8, but are showing signs of improvement lately coming off wins at Nebraska and home vs. UCLA following a three-game skid.
Penn State has dropped its last four contests - two of them close losses to ranked Michigan State and Oregon - to fall to 12-6 on the year. These appear to be two teams heading in opposite directions, but Penn State figures to be pretty desperate. We wouldn't bet against them winning, but feel like it will be hard for the Nittany Lions to cover the 7.5-point spread against a team with two potential first-round NBA draft picks on the floor. Road refs and foul trouble always can play a role, however, and Rutgers' depth players haven't been great this year.
The rest of today's schedule is highlighted by a full slate of Ivy League matchups and a few Colonial Athletic Association contests.
We've mentioned here many times that the win probability alone doesn't make a pick one that we would recommend to our paying customers - or anyone else for that matter. Once we determine which teams meet the criteria to be fully considered as All-Star or Superstar Picks according to our model, there is another process in which we run those teams through a rigorous set of rules and guidelines before settling on which, if any, make the cut to be recommended selections.
Remember that our Superstar Picks have a win probability of at least 70 percent, while our All-Star Picks come in at 60 percent or better.
As you read through today's information, keep in mind that we are extremely selective with our recommended picks as they need to have at least a 60-percent win probability or better according to our proprietary algorithm and also must pass through that stringent set of parameters that we consider for each matchup. In our daily posts you will find our recommended bets as well as games that don't quite make the cut to be recommended and which might make solid parlay options and other games where we believe there are edges favoring one side.
Parlays always will have a lower win probability than straight bets, but there are times that a parlay will meet our requirements and be recommended. We realize that many sports bettors prefer not to bet very short odds that approach and exceed -200, so in our goal to provide as much information and help as many people as possible, we do provide potential parlay options that are strong bets that don't quite make the cut for us as well as other games that have betting edges but also don't quite meet our high standards to be recommended picks.
Our college basketball betting edges have performed well, hovering at around 56 to 57 percent over a large sample size since early November, and our parlay options have been extremely successful as you can see below.
StatLogic Sports Superstar Picks for 1/20
Superstar Picks have a 70% or better win probability
CBB: N/A
NBA: N/A
StatLogic Sports All-Star Picks for 1/20
All-Star Picks have a 60% or better win probability
NBA: LA Clippers money line -220 vs. Chicago Bulls (68% win probability)
COLLEGE FOOTBALL All-Star Pick - CFP Championship
SGP: Notre Dame +14.5 with OVER 39.5 at +111 (65%) - WIN
Parlay City
While we usually don't recommend parlays - mainly because it decreases the win probability while increasing the potential payout - for those who aren't interested in laying the juice, combining two of our money line recommended picks or pairing one of our recommended picks with other picks we think have betting edges often can be very strong plays as well. They just may not be strong enough to meet the criteria for us to recommend them, though, and are "bet at your own risk" like the other games we post that have betting edges.
Our potential money line parlay games from Jan. 4-6 were 19-1 ... they have gone 99-31 since Jan. 4 and were 18-2 Jan. 14-15.
Potential Money Line Parlay Options for 1/20
NBA:
LA Clippers
CBB:
Harvard - LOSS
Cornell - LOSS
SE Louisiana - WIN
Colgate - WIN
Nicholls State - LOSS
LIU Brooklyn - WIN
Ohio State is a strong money line parlay option to use with any of the teams listed above.
NCAA Basketball Season Betting Edge Record:
526-407-12 (56.4%)
Jan. 20 Record: 6-3
Jan. 19 Record: 2-4
Jan. 18 Record: 20-14
Jan. 17 Record: 6-4
Jan. 16 Record: 15-6
Jan. 15 Record: 8-11-1
Jan. 14 Record: 9-6
Last 7 days: 66-48-1 (57.9%)
Last 40 days: 341-263-8 (56.5%)
Stat-Logic Sports NCAA College Basketball Betting Edges 1/20
These will be updated throughout the day so please check back!
Dartmouth +16.5 at Yale - WIN
Columbia +7 at Princeton - WIN
Georgetown +9 at Villanova - WIN
Rutgers +7.5 at Penn State - LOSS
Hampton money line -140 vs. NC A&T - WIN
Wagner money line -145 vs. St. Francis PA - WIN
Southeast Louisiana -5.5 at East Texas A&M - WIN
Nicholls -4.5 vs. Lamar - LOSS Stonehill -1.5 at Lemoyne - LOSS
Our Process
We take a look at every single college and pro basketball game on the schedule every day. By using available data and a strict filtering progress, we are able to determine which games might present betting edges for us to examine more closely.
Since we are a small - but hopefully growing - family-oriented business, we only have so much manpower and bandwidth available to create content and break down games. Just trust us when we say that we follow a very detailed extensive process every day, which helps us weed out games, determine where there might be betting edges and ultimately determine which picks will meet our high standards to be the ones we recommend to clients and potential customers.
Because of the number of games that can be on the daily basketball docket - there were 130 college hoops games Saturday - and the attention we give to football now and baseball in the spring, there are some days when we don't have the time to break down our picks and potential picks and provide as much content as we like, so on days like that we may just post picks here or on our Twitter or BlueSky account.
Soon we also will be using TikTok, Instagram and YouTube to post picks, game breakdowns and other content as often ass possible. There also is a podcast in our future plans via which we will provide insight about games, picks and sports gambling to help anyone interested along their sports-gambling journey.
And we will continue to post and break down games that our model feels strongly about that are close to being recommended picks but don't make the cut for one reason or another. Those will be posted for anyone to see along with the games with betting edges you see below that we have been posting for several months now.
Those edges are presented in this space, along with any recommended picks from our proprietary algorithm, several times a week. Most of them will miss the cut to be recommended selections, because we have a very stringent set of requirements that must be met for a game to be released as an All-Star or Superstar Pick.
After analyzing as many as 50 different statistical categories and other factors for each contest, our proprietary algorithm proceeds to provide us with win probabilities for whichever games we run. Percentages are provided for spread bets, money-line bets and totals.
From there. we throw out any games that are below 60-percent win probability and then apply a rigorous set of rules and guidelines to each contest to determine which ones meet our final criteria. Information such as injuries, rest, coaching matchups, styles of play and pace, recent form and other data points are included in this process.
Once the process is complete, hopefully we are left with a few games that become recommended picks - and perhaps a few that narrowly miss the cut.
We usually don't recommend parlays, but we realize there are times when the short odds for one of our recommended picks makes betting a certain side prohibitive for some people. When that happens, although we may not recommend the parlay, we at least want to help those folks have the best chance of winning if that's the direction they choose to take.
So far in our tracking of college basketball games since the season opened in early November, the games we have determined to have betting edges have compiled a record of 526-407-12 (56.4%). All of our recommended picks that have been posted in all sports since mid-August have been winning consistently at about a 70-percent clip
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