2015-16 Basketball Season Recap
My Basketball Best Bets were just 269-257- 5 in the 2015-16 season (169-143- 1 in College and 100-114- 4 in the NBA) and 470-460- 8 on a Star Basis for -34.7 Stars at -110 odds (including +1.3 Stars on series plays).
My Best Bets suffered -33 stars of variance – mostly due to being just 2-9- 1 in bets that were changed due to overtime (9 underdogs and an under that lost in OT, an underdog push, and just 2 favorites that covered in OT). The overtime results alone resulted in a swing of -26.2 Stars (from being 16-3 on Stars for +12.7 Stars in those games I was instead 3-15- 1 on Stars for -13.5 Stars) and games decided by extreme variance (-8.5 in that category) and toss-up games (+6) were a bit negative as well. I’ve had some years when the luck was on my side too – but never to the degree that this season has been negative in variance.
My opinions were 158-131- 5 (55%) but unfortunately those do not count on my official record. Overall, my analysis wasn’t that bad but it certainly wasn’t as good as it should be and it’s unfortunate that the negative variance affected the Best Bets rather than the opinions.
The good news is that my new College Basketball match up model worked well, especially on totals. The new model was 193-133- 4 on qualifying totals, including an even better 47-23- 2 once I started releasing them to subscribers (11-7 on Best Bets and 36-16- 2 on Opinions) and posting them on the Free Analysis page. The College sides were profitable and I’ll release more totals next season to hopefully increase the college profits.
The NBA obviously had a down year but I had won the previous 3 years on my NBA Best Bets (285-231- 13 (55%) combined) and this past season’s NBA was derailed by a 15 game swing in results changed by overtime (from 8-0 to 0-7- 1 due to dogs not covering in OT). Overall, my player specific ratings continued to perform well and I expect to bounce back next season on my NBA Best Bets. An NBA match up model that is similar to the model that was developed for College Basketball is in the works, and hopefully the NBA match up model will be just as good at picking totals as the College model has proven to be.