Jan 24 Games

Been a long, long time now between picks. Just crazy busy at work. But tonight we've got a good test: (19) Dayton at (22) Xavier.

Pick: Dayton (+11)
Pick: Over (139)

(6) Washington State (+1.5) @ Arizona
Pick: WSU
Pick: Over (125)

No time to explain the picks, unfortunately.

Results
This is a great lesson in two areas:
1. My idiocy
2. Why picks made in the span of 5 minutes tend to not work out so well. I freely admit that I should have done more research before making gut calls. This is why Vegas bets end up being harder than they might need to. You're caught up in the excitement and the rush, and before you know it, you've put $50 on a 3-team parlay, the back end of which involves some dog sled race.

Xavier - 69; Dayton - 43 (112)
In all honesty, I initially had Xavier as my first pick along with the over. They're better than Dayton in all the categories: scoring, rebounds, defense, point differential. But when I drilled down, the differences in rebounds were marginal (really, how important is a tenth of a rebound?), and I had a hard time really placing value on some of the defensive numbers because I have no idea about any of the teams they've played. The point differential should have been a big enough indicator to believe the spread, as should the difference in free throw percentage. But I got swayed by Dayton's road defense and road rebounding numbers and went against my gut instinct. What can I say? I'm not very smart. So I lost both calls on this game.

Arizona - 76, Washington State - 64 (140)
Here was the 3 minute thought process on this one: I'm pretty sure that Washington State is a better team, and I would wager that when this game is played at WSU the outcome is different. If WSU is really approaching big time status, then they should be able to win in Tucson, which has traditionally been close to impossible in Pac-10 play. Honestly, that's all that went into it. At least I won the over.

Jan 24 record: 1-3
Overall: 14-10