Jimmyshivers Week 10 ACC Football Picks
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14 thoughts on “Jimmyshivers Week 10 ACC Football Picks”
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MAXIMIZE YOUR EDGE
Fellow State fan here Jimmy. I’ve followed you on twitter for a few weeks (I’m @BojanglesSweetT)and I’ve seen you refer to your spreadsheet numbers a couple of times now. As a bettor who is trying to become more analytical, what can you tell me about how you develop your numbers in excel so that I may get started on my own?
Hey Greg,
For me using excel for college football is something I’ve done for a long time, but just in the past 2 weeks I’ve really stepped up my efforts to develop an automated way of looking at the 124 FBS teams. First of all, I highly recommend https://www.cfbstats.com/, they have a ton of sortable stats for every team that are easy to import into a spreadsheet.
If your looking at their stats, I recommend sorting by ‘vs. FBS’ to remove the bloated stats from playing the early-season FCS games that are ultimately irrelevant to a teams statistical identity. Then you want to pick a few stats that you think are ultimately relevant (a few of the ones that I import include 3rd down conversions and red zone success for both the offense and the defense). Stength of schedule is important as well, and I like the rankings provided by teamrankings.com for this purpose.
After I’ve imported the stats and sorted alphabetically within excel to get just one team on each line, comes the hard part. You have to toy around with your stats to make the normalized, for example I take the offense and defensive 3rd down % and divide by 3 (60% becomes 20.0). I then add up all my offensive stats and defensive stats separately and subtract the d stats from the o stats to get an overall power ranking.
If you have any specific questions I’d be more than happy to address them, admittedly I’m pretty new to some of the excel commands. I don’t trust my numbers alone, but they do give me a place to start and see opening line value (by running my numbers early sunday I knew to be ready to jump all over those Texas Tech and Virginia lines). Hope this helps Greg
Jimmy- the MAN!! You guys are rockin. How did you get textech @ -2.5? I have it @ bookmaker as -7
Appreciate it Brett,
After weeks of watching the lines I like move against me, I decided to get more proactive this week and play some openers (Betonline.com releases lines around 4:30 – 4:40 pm). I had already ran my #’s for the week and felt like that one offered a ton of value. It quickly popped up to 3.5 before going all the way to 7. I also liked Texas A&M @ the -2.5 opener but regrettably decided to pass.
FWIW, I would play Texas Tech all the way up to 6.5 here, my numbers have them by 16.5 and Texas is (once again) just an absolute mess. Best of luck
Jimmy love your insight on here, twitter, and BTB forum. I respect your opinion and seeing your confidence within the NCST/VU game I took a look at it myself.
What are your thoughts on how bad VU has played on the road this year? I was looking at the H/A splits and the stats for VU defense on the road were staggering. Their competition on the road has been tough so the numbers could be misleading, but I was wondering your thoughts on that. I wish I could have got the 14, but its down to 10 at my book.
Also you did point out how bad NCSU has been on the ground, and VU run defense has not been great against the run. Do you think NCSU could take advantage of that?
Not questioning you by any measure, just a few questions. Just a beginning handicapper trying to get better in the college game. Thanks and keep up the great work.
Not sure what the BTB forum is BD, but I appreciate the support. Addressing your points..
UVA has some ugly box scores on the road so far. Digging a little deeper, they were in two of their 3 road games for awhile (they lead Duke at the half and were moosed badly by TCU throwing for a very late score) before things broke against them. The Georgia Tech loss was wholly ugly but it was against a GT team that was playing well at the time and not the train wreck you see before you. Obviously it’s a bit troubling that they didn’t cover this 14 number in their 3 road games, but I’m giving them a bit of a pass on that here as I’ve seen some positive signs of increasing stability the last couple of weeks.
At the number 10, I would still play UVA, but only for a 4 unit play. I feel that this is a one-score game and anything more than that represents value on the dog here in my opinion.
Looking at UVA against the run, the numbers aren’t really that bad, they’ve allowed 4.3 yards per carry in their FBS games and they’ve actually been pretty consistent, allowing 5.0 ypc to only two teams (GT and surprisingly Duke). I’ve already talked about States troubles on the ground, and they took another hit this week when they announced one of their RB’s (James Washington) is done for the season. Considered with the removal of Mustafa Greene, their actually pretty thin at running back. I don’t see much success there.
I appreciate the comments BD, I really do appreciate the questions and feedback. The best way for us to learn is to share information and gain insight into how each other thinks. Feel free to comment any time, and best of luck this weekend.
Thanks. Just got down on VU +10.
Is there anyway I could contact you through email? This is my second year really wagering seriously and have a few questions about developing power rankings after reading your response to the earlier comment about power rankings.
I understand if you don’t want to give it out and it makes sense, thought I might as well try. If not, do you know anybody else I could contact or talk to about developing my own power rankings? I could always ask the questions on here, if you thought that would be better.
Again thanks for all the work you’ve been putting out this year, helping me make a few dollars!! Let me know on regards to power rankings. I think you can see my email through me commenting on this, so you could always just send me an email there, and I completely understand if its not gonna work out for x reason.
Virginia Tech (especially their defense) has been bad on the road this year, suffering double digit losses at Pitt, UNC, and Clemson. I don’t think Miami is as good as Clemson, but they might be in the same conversation as Pitt and UNC. Then again, big coaching edge to VaTech, especially coming off the bye. We’ll see if Beamer can turn them around.
I agree that VT has definitely struggled on the road, but they’ve actually played a pretty good group of teams (0-4 away from B-berg with games atUNC, Clemson and Pitt with a neutral with Cincinnatti). I vehemently disagree that Miami is in the same conversation with UNC or Pitt, Carolina played an awful game down there (15 penalties, couple of key red zone mistakes) and still went for nearly 500 yards and pulled of a W at Miami. If I’m wrong (it’s happened a lot this year), I’m willing to pay to see it Thursday night.
On a bit of an unrelated note, VT’s coaching staff has been steadily slipping for several years it feels like. Each of the past 5 years I’ve lowered their ranking in my preseason numbers. The continuity that was once their strength has lead to a culture of comfort and stale ideas. Special teams, which was once a strength for them, has faded significantly and has actively hurt them on several occasions. I just feel like the Coastal division is pretty weak and VT will do what they always do which is close strong enough to get routed in Charlotte.
email sent, BD..
i was thinking the exact same thing about duke when the line was 14/14.5 but didn’t want to play it until i got confirmation about renfree…now at current price i will pass unless it gets back to 14
good luck
Line moving into the 12.5 range today, not very confident that it gets back in that 2 TD range. I understand your reasons for passing without the 14/14′.