NCAA Pick of the Day 01/15/25 (109-82): Stanford +6.5 -108

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Analysis:

Stanford makes its second big, cross country trip in its ACC tenure as the Cardinal (Tree?) head to Winston-Salem, NC to take on the Demon Deacons of Wake Forest. By most accounts and measures this would be a near even match on a true neutral floor, but the cross country travel to a new location makes it an intriguing challenge for the market to gauge as the power dynamic in these 16+ team super conferences settle into place.

As you might suspect, ShotQuality sees things just a bit differently. SQ is a big fan of what Stanford is doing this season, rating them as a top 65 unit both offensively and defensively, which results in a net ranking just outside the top 50. The data points to their tough defense at the rim and ball security as its main highlights, with praise for their rebounding as well as ability to limit 3PA% on defense.

They've been unlucky with opposing shot making for most of the year, seeing their foes make shots in the top 12th percentile compared to the national average. This is reflected in their defensive regression expectations, especially around the rim and from midrange. They limit rim and three rate on defense and that will force Wake Forest to have to hit some middies to cover this multi-possession spread.

The Demon Deacons will likely oblige the defensive pressures of Stanford, they take an alarming number of shots from the post, and while they do force turnovers well, they also lack their own ball security on offense. Wake is expected to both be scoring more and allowing more points, which evens out in their efficiencies. So while SQ does essentially verify them as a top 80/90 team, there's enough edge in the bump to Stanford that we can comfortably make this play.

Remember, rankings are not linear and so moving up from 80 to 50 is not the same as 50 to 20 and also not the same as 80 down to 110. It works well enough to illustrate a point, but it's densely packed at the top and our metrics on Stanford indicate they're playing very smart ball. It's a tough travel spot, but it's also likely too many points.

SQ's Projection: WAKE 74 - STAN 72 Visit the Matchup Simulator with any membership to view all projections from the model!

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Yesterday's Pick Recap: ECU +3.5 -110 ❌

Final Score: UNT 69 - ECU 60. Post-Game SQ Score: UNT 58.4 - ECU 54. Pre-Game Projection: UNT 66 - UNT 63.5.

Takeaways: ack! A 47-43 lead for ECU with 12 minutes left and I was feeling alright, but a brutal 17-3 run in which UNT went 6/8 and ECU went 1/9 from the floor across a five minute plus stretch was just too much to come back from. It's a frustrating one, but there wasn't much in that run to say it was 'deserved'. The SQ score, even with that late clobbering was only a point off of our spread... an errors worth, truly. Now it's still the wrong side of an errors worth to be on, for sure, so it goes down as an expected loss and an actual loss in my book, but I liked what I saw out of ECU and feel like we got a bottom 10% outcome with that run, it wasn't like they weren't taking shots or turning it over, they just kept missing and it got out of hand. A shame, but such is life. This game also had one of the worst beats I've ever seen if you had U128.5, it will be on Bad Beats next Monday. No doubt. It might sound tired, but I'd take the bet again - you'll know when I feel like I wouldn't run it back and the data will be candid, too, but this was definitely a close one that we just didn't get the big run in and the other team did. On to the next.

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