NCAA Pick of the Day 01/11/25 (108-79): USC Upstate +5.5 -110

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Analysis:

Another, another, another home dog... are you noticing a trend?

This USC Upstate team is not going to blow your socks off, but there's a distinct opportunity to buy low on this team against their weak efficiency stats and stronger expected numbers. It's a scary ask but it's made less so by a simultaneous chance to fade a team that's over performing in Radford.

Radford broke a brutal streak of four straight losses with a big, 20 point home win over Winthrop ... SQ expected just a single point game, and for it to be a loss. Quite the difference, I would say. My takeaway from this is that the broke clock was right for its two minutes a day. Radford hit some shots and Winthrop missed some to create an anomaly of a result more than six possessions off of what was most likely.

Upstate also played Winthrop last week, at Winthrop, and lost by 20. SQ had an expected loss margin of six. Road loss of six and home-court tie are seen as equal, if flatly assigning a 3 point home court advantage in each direction... and I'll do that here since it corroborates my theory. No confirmation bias here... no way! However, if you were only looking at the box score you might think that, "USCU lost to a team by 20 that Radford beat by 20, how is this just +6.5? Radford should destroy them!" And so they may! It is certainly a possibility, but that's just not what the SQ data says is most likely.

USCU attacks the rim at a top 50 rate, and defends the three very well for a low major team, they have been cold from three and also have seen opponents make shots at an elevated level. This is a buy low, no doubt about it. As for Radford, SQ notes their bad offensive spacing, which leads to a slow tempo and a high rate of ISO shots. On defense they allow too many 3PT shots and USCU might be able to take advantage of that with their quick trigger.

This will be a battle of tempos, certainly - and a good precursor to our success will be the number of possessions - we want as many as possible, they probably want to slow the game down as it would likely correlate with the Spartans not getting good enough looks to fire early in the clock.

The model and I agree again today, should be much closer to an even fight... which might sound crazy but that's why it's my favorite play of over 140+ games on this loaded Saturday!

P.S. Watch BetCast at 2:45pm ET!!!

SQ's Projection: RAD 74.0 - USCU 73.7 Visit the Matchup Simulator with any membership to view all projections from the model!

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Yesterday's Pick Recap: Niagara +1.5 ✅

Final Score: NIAG 70 - SPU 60. Post-Game SQ Score: SPU 58.9 - NIAG 58.3. Pre-Game Projection: NIAG 70 - SPU 65.

Takeaways: Niagara never trailed in this game, a true wire-to-wire winner. The ShotQuality data paints a game that was close, but Niagara scored more points than expected at home to secure a victory. Our angle was on the SPU defense being lucky, and likely to regress to their expectations... and they did exactly that. They allowed not only a 1.28 PPS but a 1.07 SQPPS, which is worse than their seasonal expectations and MUCH worse than their seasonal actual mark. This is regression in action, SPU had been lucky and they couldn't sustain it, in fact they did worse and the needle will shift more towards SQ's projections as the box-score models adjust to the poor defense shown.

As Mike Breen says, "Bang!"

Recaps are a NEW section to the POTD to help illustrate how SQ data can be used to qualify bets beyond winning and losing!