covers.com

Has anyone here tried using the power ratings at covers.com to pick NCAA basketball games? I took a look at it yesterday, and adjusting for home/away, it hit 66% on a certain group, visiting dogs. It went 24 and 12, a fair sampling. But it was only one day.

Just for giggles......here's today's picks based upon covers.com power ratings.

St. Peter's 8.5
Rider 8.5
Northwestern 2

No, but I know of an individual who uses the Sagarin power ratings at http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/bkt1213.htm. It sounds like he's doing very well.

A couple of months ago, I "met" him in another sports forum. Apparently he was spending a few hours each day downloading and assembling this data by hand. I took a look at the websites and basically said, "Dude, let me write you a program to do this for you!" We negotiated on a fee and I ended up spending a weekend writing it for him.

Now, at the click of a single button, the spreadsheet goes three different websites (Don Best, Statfox, and USAToday) and downloads that day's matchups along with the NCAA data for each matchup that he wanted. He couldn't be happier.

I'm not a basketball fan at all, but for those who are, maybe these power ratings are worth a look.

Thanks Ed. Many years ago I tried using the Sagarin power ratings and didn't have good results. Maybe it is different now? Don't know, but off of one day, the covers.com ratings did well for visiting dogs.