NCAA Pick of the Day 01/06/25 (105-77): UTRGV -1.5 -105

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Analysis:

This one's about as served on a silver platter as you're going to get. ShotQuality has UTRGV ranked as a middle of the road team on both offense and defense, but if you take a look at their results; you'll probably think less of their defense than you should. Plus, SELA is rated as a significantly weaker opponent than what people might think.

When using SQ data, it's usually best to remember that recency bias runs rampant in sports betting, and that SQ's truest edge is being more predictive with less data. In other words, SQ arrives at the proper conclusion faster than everyone else. There's a few things to take from this, most importantly, I would say, is that as the sample size expands, other modeling methods become much more equal to ShotQuality - our advantage is in reacting properly to the most recent results. So, it's best to look to recent games as opportunities to find where the market might misjudge a team rather than further back into the early weeks of the season.

Let me show you what I mean here. UTRGV lost an ugly one at home to Lamar, a team a lot of people are high on. The game ended 84-52. Ugh-uhh-lee. Down 46-23 at the half, five of twenty-nine from three-type ugly. Forget how bad the Vaqueros shot, they allowed a 37 of 64 night from the field. Lamar made more shots than RGV missed. Read that again. That's just a BAD GAME. SQ expected a 6 point deficit at the half before it became a wild blowout and conditions stopped being as applicable. Quite different than 23, though.

The UTRGV defense is going to be undervalued because that type of loss is still fresh in the 'mind' of the analytics. Not SQ's, but you know what I mean. This is much different than trying to look at SELA's expected win in November as a reason to stay away from this play. With so much time gone by, that's all properly factored, or, at least less so such that we can't gain the advantage we want.

But back to the matchup at hand; Rio plays a smart game, they live and die by their three point shooting (9th highest 3PA%) ... which you should do even if people think it's killing the game, it's not... and then on the other side they limit opponents looks from deep (37th lowest opp. 3PA%). It's great strategy until you go cold and look stupid!

Perfect time to invest in them, though!

Especially against SELA, who SQ sees as worse than their billing. The Lions will oblige the Vaqueros' defense, shooting 67th most at the rim and 72nd most in the midrange, and, you guessed it, 291st most from deep. They are very weak from their more favored shots, and actually pretty good from three, when they can actually manufacture a look within the realm of viability. Add in that SELA is bottom 20 in turnover rate offensively, and you could be giving UTRGV enough looks from deep to win this by multiple possessions, even without a plus shooting night.

A good, old fashioned math-ball loving team in UTRGV against a squad SQ sees as outside the top 300... which the market might also be slow to realize. The model isn't in love with the play, but it's not easy to overcome road biases in a good system - that's okay. I make it UTRGV -4.5. Play the slight road favorite and expect them to get it done.

Projection: UTRGV 73 - SELA 72

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