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Free NBA Pick: Columbia -8.0
Friday February 8 ‘08 7:00p - Click Here to View Current NBA odds
This play is the result of a successful computer model that has allowed Bob Akmens Sports to finish in first-place in 152 different categories of documented monitored handicapping contests since 1978.

The computer models I’ve developed for each sport look at the most-predictive variables that go into the winning and losing of games.

Several interesting factors in today’s play are as follows:

Surprisingly, many bettors are not aware that the Ivy League conference games are perhaps as formful as almost any other league – maybe even more so.

Why would this be? Well, consider this: the Ivy hoop teams are just about the only ones comprised 100% of actual, honest-to-goodness, win-one-for-the-Gipper-type, student-athletes, which is about as much of an oxymoron in college hoops as you can get.

You have morons on many squads, true – but not oxymorons, folks

There’s not a single stupid, illiterate, full-of-‘tude player on the court for any of the 8 Ivy League teams. I absolutely guarantee that’s a fact.

You’re just not going to get brainless idiots playing for, say, Duke or Stanford. Some of those guys might win a Nobel in medicine someday – or even be president (though that doesn’t say much, does it, these days). But those schools do have hoop scholarship players – the Ivy’s do not.

Thus, the Ivy players – black, white, yellow or any color of the rainbow – are smart players in how they play games. Watch almost any Ivy conference game and you’ll see college hoops the way it used to be played: timely passing and patience exhibited by good shot-selection (and very few watch-your-jaw-drop-stupid and selfish 30-foot turnaround 3-point jumpers).

All of this means that recent point spread performances in various categories often hold up better in these Ivy matchups than they do in some wild-and-woolly contest between guys who don’t hear or pay much attention to their coaches but have their own agendas of bad shots and generally non-teamwork behavior.

I played ball in college and if I had even attempted most of the shots so many college players try these days, I would have had endless wooden splinters in my butt from sitting on the bench.

With all that said, on the face of it, this looks like some sort of bum-game between two losers with Penn at 7-12 and Columbia at 8-11.

But forget what Penn has done at home and Columbia on the road for this one: focus on what they’ve done where they are tonight – and that’s at Columbia’s Morningside Heights gym in upper-Manhattan.

This is one of the poorer Penn team’s I’ve seen in years – especially on the road – where they’ve covered 3 of their last 11 affairs, and only 1 out of their 7 as a dog.

Most telling of their poor road-performance might be their large negative scoring- differential: 64.3 PPG offensively and 79.3 PPG defensively, which is a rotten -14.9 average differential.

The Columbia Lions have covered 6 of their last 7 overall, are a much better home-team than the Quakers are a road-team, and can handle this spot tonight

GO WITH COLUMBIA -8 IN THIS 700PM EST MATCHUP.

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