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Bounce Back Week with Picks, Without the Handicapper Schtick

The NCAA Tournament is coming, and everyone will be looking for help with their bracket pools. Check out college basketball predictions provided various sites if you want, but don’t ever pay for picks. It just makes no sense. The point spreads generally make the games enough of a tossup; paying for some guy’s pick just makes it necessary to risk more to recover the cost of buying an opinion from a so-called “expert.” And if the expert pick loses, no refund is coming.

I had a solid bounce back week. My picks went 6-3 for +32.28. Only last night’s rough loss by half a point on North Carolina -2.5 over Florida State kept me from making up front last two weeks in points. But for 2011, I’m still at 23-19 for +66.29 points.

I didn’t like many games in the NBA, but went 2-1 for +8.64 points. I had a bad call on the Celtics -4.5 versus Denver before learning of the Kendrick Perkins trade. I thought about yanking the pick off twitter once I heard about it, not because Perkins was so vital to the team or anything but I just wouldn’t have wanted to deal with a team literally in the middle of a trade. However, that seemed disingenuous, so I let it ride and got the expected loss. I bounced back with a second 5-point pick on Sunday with the Lakers -1 over Oklahoma City. Then on Tuesday I doubled-up for a 10-point pick, winning with the Mavericks -2 over the Sixers. I like where the Sixers are headed, and was surprised they hung with the Mavs as long as they did, but I just didn’t think they could beat Dallas. Then again, they did beat the Spurs earlier in the month.

I also had a winning week in college basketball going 4-2 for +23.64 points. I went a little heavier than usual with some picks and did pretty well. On Saturday, Syracuse was a pick ‘em against Georgetown and I got the win on a 10-point pick. Duke let me down twice this week, losing as a favorite to Virginia Tech Saturday night for 10 points. I already mentioned last night.

Saturday was a winning day with St. John’s +6 over Villanova. Guys like Brandon Lang would scream about having won an underdog “outright” on a game like this, but that’s totally meaningless unless the pick was on the money line. He’s been doing that type of thing all week. It’s ridiculous. I feel like I blew this game because I thought about taking SJU as a money line play – but I took the spread. There is a real difference. I don’t yell about outright winners when I pick with the spread. When guys do that, all they’re saying is that they didn’t win as many points on the pick as they’re trying to convince people that knew they could have all along. It’s actually a fairly stupid thing to say. I didn’t feel comfortable with SJU winning outright, so I took the +6 for 10 points to win 9.09. I forget its value, but the money line for 10 points on SJU would have won more points.

Sunday brought my biggest winner of the season in basketball. In reality, it probably wasn’t the best pick because Louisville took overtime to cover -1.5 over Pittsburgh. I wanted to shoot the idiot cheerleader who actually got a technical foul for interfering with the game and almost costing me the W. (It’s a figure of speech. No one should want to actually shoot the cheerleader.)

Sunday was actually a 3-0 sweep, with West Virginia -3.5 over Rutgers on a 5-point pick.

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