2013-14 Picks Contest

[stlexplorer]

I'm pretty sure we attempted some kind of picks contest on the old board but wanted to throw it out there as a brainstorming session to have a running picks contest here on this board. We could just do it straight up for A-10 games, against the spread, and/or limit to just our games. Looking for some ideas as I think it could be fun to sticky a running contest on the board and keep track.

[Shout out to my Cousin Bern]

My vote is for a straight up. We may want to just pick a handful of A10 games a week maybe?

[MisterD]

Straight up seems too easy unless we want to try to pick every game every day. What if we do ATS, you pick every La Salle game + 3 other A-10 related games per week (so everyone has the same number of games). Forgetting to pick for a week is 0-4 or 0-5 if we play twice.

[MisterD]

Post picks here, track via google spreadsheet or something?

[MisterD]

I really need to go find a new avatar.

[Shout out to my Cousin Bern]

How would ATS work for picks? Would someone post the spreads and games we'd be picking?

[MisterD]

I don't even think you'd have to post if we just all agree on a site and do it more like horseracing than basketball (not that A-10 games tend to have big moves late in the day anyway).

[luhoopsfan]

but wouldn't we have to go with the # set as of a certain day of the week? If I take Fordham +25 against Kansas based on Thursday's line and the line moves to +20 Saturday morning and they lose by 22 do I win or lose and how do we keep track?

Overall I love this idea and think this could be fun. Maybe it's La Salle + 3 games on Saturday based on the line from Wednesday or something.

[MisterD]

That's why I said like horseracing, you just get the final line. Unless someone wants to track and post official lines as of noon or whatever every day. That doesn't sound like fun.

[luhoopsfan]

No, it doesn't sound fun at all.

How about you enter your picks based on the line you see for that particular day based upon the vegasinsider.com consensus odds for Las Vegas?

So if I go on there today to take The Explorers - 6.5 against Manhattan, that's my wager regardless of where the line ends up. Although for our games, the line rarely has more than a half to 1.5 point movement.

[MisterD]

Call me cynical, but I feel like we'll get into issues or people picking a big move "before it moved".

[MisterD]

1:00 - La Salle minus 40 against St. Joseph's of PA

1:30 - La Salle goes to minus 30 against St. Joseph's of PA

1:35 - "Explorer Al" (hypothetical made up poster) takes St. Joseph's of PA at +40

2:00 - People notice and doubt, but can't prove anything because (to my knowledge) no sites timestamp their moves

[luhoopsfan]

Ok - we go with final line as of tip time. If you post your pick early and the line moves, so be it.

I hope we can make this work - should be fun

[stlexplorer]

I hope we can make this work as well. My thought is I don't know how early lines are listed but we just copy and paste the lines into the thread and let people pick either all the games or I like the idea of picking say 3 and keeping a running tally. Someone throw out a website that puts up lines hopefully earlier than the day of the game.

[stlexplorer]

Launching one last attempt to get this off the ground. Final thoughts?

[durenduren]

If we can figure it out, I'd love to play.

[luhoopsfan]

How do those Google spreadsheet things work? I think that's the avenue to go but I don't know how to share them like that. But it would be the easiest way to keep tabs and standings. I can set the sheet up in a matter of minutes but I don't know if it means I would have to log everyone's picks or if people can put their own in there.

[Shout out to my Cousin Bern]

Nov 7, 2013 8:50:56 GMT -5 luhoopsfan said:

How do those Google spreadsheet things work? I think that's the avenue to go but I don't know how to share them like that. But it would be the easiest way to keep tabs and standings. I can set the sheet up in a matter of minutes but I don't know if it means I would have to log everyone's picks or if people can put their own in there.

Once you create the document you can share it by adding emails addresses. From there, those individuals are able to access the document and make edits. You will need to gather email addresses.

[vasalos]

Just freeze the lines. You don't want to deal with moving lines. Usually Noon the day of the game is a good time because the lines come out the night before and there's movement. Usually a line settles by 10AM. You don't want to use lines at tip off because there's usually crazy movement with late money.

If you're going to do this do it right.

[vasalos]

Lines are usually posted by 9PM the night before the game. I would freeze lines by Noon day of game. Picks have to submitted to a centralized person before tip off to maintain confidentiality of picks before tip off. This is going to turn into an almost daily submission process since A10 games will be spread out across 3-4 nights. This isn't going to be easy.

Remember lines aren't posted until night before the game so it's hard to cut down on the number of submissions needed.

NFL is so much easier to manage because lines are posted 1 week in advance.

www.vegasinsider.com/college-basketball/odds/las-vegas/

[expbrady03]

Nov 7, 2013 12:01:41 GMT -5 vasalos said:

Lines are usually posted by 9PM the night before the game. I would freeze lines by Noon day of game. Picks have to submitted to a centralized person before tip off to maintain confidentiality of picks before tip off. This is going to turn into an almost daily submission process since A10 games will be spread out across 3-4 nights. This isn't going to be easy.

Remember lines aren't posted until night before the game so it's hard to cut down on the number of submissions needed.

NFL is so much easier to manage because lines are posted 1 week in advance.

www.vegasinsider.com/college-basketball/odds/las-vegas/

That's the problem with doing this ATS, the crazy commitment it is going to take picking games daily, let alone the responsibility of the commissioner to update the spreads every night. My vote would be that the commissioner posts the list every Sunday morning of all A10 and all Big5 (why not?) games for the week. We pick every game for the week and assign a total scoring system (say most correct picks gets 5 points, 2nd gets 3, and 3rd gets 1, everyone else pulls a goose egg). At the end of the season whoever has the most points is our champion. Thoughts? 

[vasalos]

I like the idea. But straight up is just not as much fun nor does straight up create as much disparity between pickers as ATS would. But from a management stand point we may have no choice but to do straight up picks.

[durenduren]

Doing anything but straight picks sounds like a TON of work.

[Shout out to my Cousin Bern]

Nov 7, 2013 12:19:19 GMT -5 expbrady03 said:

Nov 7, 2013 12:01:41 GMT -5 vasalos said:

Lines are usually posted by 9PM the night before the game. I would freeze lines by Noon day of game. Picks have to submitted to a centralized person before tip off to maintain confidentiality of picks before tip off. This is going to turn into an almost daily submission process since A10 games will be spread out across 3-4 nights. This isn't going to be easy.

Remember lines aren't posted until night before the game so it's hard to cut down on the number of submissions needed.

NFL is so much easier to manage because lines are posted 1 week in advance.

www.vegasinsider.com/college-basketball/odds/las-vegas/

That's the problem with doing this ATS, the crazy commitment it is going to take picking games daily, let alone the responsibility of the commissioner to update the spreads every night. My vote would be that the commissioner posts the list every Sunday morning of all A10 and all Big5 (why not?) games for the week. We pick every game for the week and assign a total scoring system (say most correct picks gets 5 points, 2nd gets 3, and 3rd gets 1, everyone else pulls a goose egg). At the end of the season whoever has the most points is our champion. Thoughts? 

I like this because I don't really understand betting on at point spread.

[expbrady03]

Nov 7, 2013 12:33:29 GMT -5 vasalos said:

I like the idea. But straight up is just not as much fun nor does straight up create as much disparity between pickers as ATS would. But from a management stand point we may have no choice to do straight up picks.

I see your point but in the first full week of the season you're lookin at 25 games featuring A10 teams alone (thats without factoring in Penn, Nova, and Temple games). Straight up or against the spread, odds are against picking 30 correct winners.

[luhoopsfan]

I think we do it this way:

Sunday night - post all A10 & Big 5 games for the following Saturday
Picks: La Salle + 3 A10 games + 1 other Big 5 team = 5 picks total (in keeping with the Big 5 tradition)

5/5 = 10 Points
4/5 = 5 points
3/5 = 3 points
2/5 = 1 point

All else = 0 points

Season's winner gets a congratulatory thread dedicated to their prognostication skills

[durenduren]

I like it. Not too complicated, and not putting too much work on any one person.

[stlexplorer]

Why not a confidence pool type thing, for example say for a full college on Saturday Jan 25:

- VCU/La Salle
- Villanova/Marquette
- GW/George Mason
- Dayton/Rhode Island
- St. Joe's/Richmond
- St. Bonaventure/Duquesne
- NJIT/Penn

There's 7 games there everyone ranks those 7 games in order of confidence of winning. So you'd post in the picks thread:

1. La Salle
2. Villanoa
3. GW
4. Dayton
5. Richmond
6. Duquesne
7. Penn

If La Salle wins you get 7 points, if they lose you get none and so on. Is that still too much?

[vasalos]

Sounds good. Are we including The conference championship games?

[vasalos]

I like lsuhoops's idea