NCAA Pick of the Day 12/19/24 (100-71): Lindenwood -2.5 -110

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Analysis:

A short slate of just 18 D1 games today leaves us a rather slim number of options, compounded by 4 of the 18 being set at spreads of greater than 20 points. The other 14 only have two 'good' contests between top 150 teams. This might make some people turn away from College Hoops on a night like tonight, but not us. We know that the lesser watched teams create the better value, so let's embrace it and willingly (blink twice if... ) place a wager on Lindenwood vs Tennessee Tech.

Why are we doing this to ourselves? Well, because it's the biggest edge on the board, of course. ShotQuality rates Lindenwood as the 261st best team in Division 1. That might sound bad, but there are 360 teams and the consensus is that Lindenwood is closer to 330th.

ShotQuality expected this Lions team to see their 12 point loss to UNO be a one point loss, their 12 point loss to Robert Morris be a coin-flip loss, and their 13 point loss to Valparaiso as a four point loss. The commonality between these games? None of them at home. In fact, this is just the second home game for Lindenwood this year, and I expect them to see some of that regression come their way.

Their abysmal 26% 3PT shooting is expected to be at 30%, and teams are hitting 37% of shots from deep against them when the location-based expectancies, that are derived unlike any other basketball metric, indicate they should be allowing 34%.

It's not much, but it's more than enough. Lindenwood develops good open looks from deep and forces turnovers on defense. Tennessee Tech is actually a 330th ranked team per both the efficiency metrics and ShotQuality. They don't have any of those favorable expected results, and their most recent 15 point win at home over Presbyterian was expected to be just 6 points. So if anything, they've been lucky and hot offensively.

You know what to do; ignore the luck, take the team that's developing the good shots. It's SQ way.

Projection: LINW 76 - TNTC 67

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