March Madness is here, which means it’s time for me to dust off the ol’ player projection model, forecast the playing time for hundreds of players I’ve never heard of and place a psychologically unhealthy number of prop bets for the next three weeks.
I’ll be honest: I don’t follow college basketball. I like the sport in theory, but in actuality I don’t take the time to watch it. That has been the case for years.
Even so, in 2019 I pulled together a “model” (set of spreadsheets) to project player production for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, and since then I’ve used this model (and updated versions of it) to bet profitably in the player prop market.
- 2019: 125-69-12, +39.8 units
- 2021: 106-64-1, +33.8 units
- 2022: 243-210, +14.9 units
- 2023: 89-67, +19.4 units (Through Thursday Round 1)
2023 NCAA Tournament Player Prop Bet Projections: Fairleigh Dickinson vs. Purdue
| Player | PTs | REBs | ASTs | PTs + REBs | PTs + ASTs | PRAs | 3Ps | FTs |
| Demetre Roberts | 12.6 | 2.6 | 3.6 | 15.2 | 16.2 | 18.8 | 1.4 | 2.1 |
| Grant Singleton | 11.4 | 3.4 | 3.1 | 14.8 | 14.5 | 17.9 | 1.9 | 1.2 |
| Ansley Almonor | 11.7 | 4.6 | 1.3 | 16.2 | 13.0 | 17.6 | 1.9 | 1.1 |
| Joe Munden | 9.4 | 5.0 | 1.0 | 14.4 | 10.4 | 15.4 | 0.7 | 1.3 |
| Sean Moore | 5.7 | 4.3 | 0.9 | 10.0 | 6.6 | 10.9 | 0.5 | 0.5 |
| Heru Bligen | 3.5 | 1.9 | 0.3 | 5.5 | 3.9 | 5.8 | 0.0 | 0.5 |
| Jo’el Emanuel | 1.8 | 1.5 | 0.6 | 3.3 | 2.5 | 4.0 | 0.1 | 0.3 |
| Sebastien Lamaute | 0.2 | 0.2 | 0.1 | 0.3 | 0.2 | 0.4 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| Cameron Tweedy | 3.0 | 2.6 | 0.5 | 5.6 | 3.5 | 6.0 | 0.0 | 0.2 |
| Brayden Reynolds | 1.5 | 0.9 | 0.9 | 2.4 | 2.4 | 3.3 | 0.0 | 0.2 |
| Trevon Blassingame | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| Daniel Rodriguez | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| Pier-Olivier Racine | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| Brandon Upshaw | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| Player | PTs | REBs | ASTs | PTs + REBs | PTs + ASTs | PRAs | 3Ps | FTs |
| Zach Edey | 25.9 | 13.3 | 2.0 | 39.2 | 27.9 | 41.2 | 0.0 | 5.7 |
| Fletcher Loyer | 10.0 | 1.4 | 2.6 | 11.5 | 12.6 | 14.1 | 1.4 | 2.0 |
| Braden Smith | 11.1 | 4.3 | 5.6 | 15.5 | 16.8 | 21.1 | 1.1 | 2.9 |
| Mason Gillis | 10.2 | 5.0 | 2.1 | 15.2 | 12.3 | 17.3 | 1.6 | 1.7 |
| Brandon Newman | 10.8 | 4.9 | 2.1 | 15.7 | 13.0 | 17.9 | 1.6 | 2.0 |
| Caleb Furst | 3.8 | 2.9 | 0.6 | 6.7 | 4.4 | 7.2 | 0.2 | 0.6 |
| Trey Kaufman-Renn | 3.3 | 1.2 | 0.6 | 4.6 | 4.0 | 5.2 | 0.1 | 0.8 |
| David Jenkins | 5.2 | 1.5 | 1.2 | 6.8 | 6.4 | 7.9 | 1.0 | 0.6 |
| Ethan Morton | 3.3 | 2.3 | 2.4 | 5.6 | 5.7 | 8.0 | 0.6 | 0.6 |
| Brian Waddell | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| Carson Barrett | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| Chase Martin | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| Sam King | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |