NCAA Pick of the Day 01/31/25 (114-91): Fairfield +12 -110

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Analysis:

A nice regression spot here, Friday night in the MAAC. "Lowly" Fairfield travels to "very strong" Quinnipiac where they are expected to lose by 12 points.

But wait... what if, in conference play, alone, Quinnipiac is getting lucky bounces on defense at the rim, and what if Fairfield is getting unlucky bounces on defense from behind the three point line? Couldn't that create a scenario in which the Bobcats appear much better than they are and the Stags appear much worse than they are? Well, as you might have guessed by my obviously flippant tone, that is exactly what's happening. And, look, if you couldn't tell... Voila! There's the big reveal.

This is creating a massive amount of difference between how these teams have done and how they would be expected to do if they played the game again, and again, and again, and again... until we found the actual median score of the game through elimination of variability with a high sample size. But anyway, Quinnipiac was expected to lose to Iona, Siena and Merrimack in just the last three weeks. They walked away with wins in them all. Fairfield was expected to beat Merrimack, twice, and Canisius. Again, all in just the last handful of weeks.

I think if the games had been played to their SQ scores, that this would likely be a -5.5 line. Being reasonable, assuming that actual efficiency and SQ have a role in predicting the future, the SQ model (which is designed to do exactly that) makes it -8, giving us a solid value against the market. Good luck, and go Stags!

SQ's Projection: QUIN 75 - FAIR 67 Visit the Matchup Simulator with any membership to view all projections from the model!

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