How the College Basketball Lab Files a Pick

College basketball runs the biggest daily slates in the section and the simplest current rule: the differential spread and nothing else. It is also the league whose consensus ran in a partial form — two of its five factors never had a working input — and this guide prints that plainly. Nothing NFL-only applies here.

The rating

The rating behind every spread pick in this section starts as a season scoring differential per game: points scored minus points allowed, divided by games played, computed from completed games only — ESPN final scores, season to date, read at filing time. Only regular-season and postseason games count toward it; preseason and exhibition games never enter the window. Since Rule v1.3 for the other sports (November 8, 2026) the pick no longer decides on that raw average: each game's margin is adjusted by the opponent's own average margin over two passes, and the pick decides on the adjusted figure. It is still not blended with any published rating. The team with the better adjusted differential is the pick, taken at the filed spread; when the two adjusted differentials sit within 1.0 point of each other, the pick is the home team. The power-ratings table on the league page ranks teams on the same adjusted figure and says so.

Lines come from The Odds API's US board as captured at filing. The anchor book is DraftKings where it carries the game, otherwise the first US book carrying all three markets. A game files only when the anchor book carries all three markets and both teams have completed games this season; otherwise it is excluded and the reason is recorded. Every pick settles from ESPN finals, in exactly the markets its record carries, under the rule version that filed it — earlier filings stand as filed and are never restated. Every pick is UNPROVEN; the section is a paper record and claims no edge.

What files under Rule v1.3

The spread, and only the spread, under the other-sports rule (selection_rule "RULE v1.3" in each record):

• Moneyline: not filed — the de-vigged favorite restated the market; NOT SUPPORTED in every corrected cell.
• Totals: not filed — the totals machines are off in every league; every totals cell graded negative.
• Consensus overlay: off — the partial machine below no longer selects.

Picks apply to the next America/New_York calendar day's slate only, filed in the morning cycle. On a big slate that is dozens of games; each files on the same one number, or is excluded with its reason recorded (no completed games, or no anchor book carrying all three markets).

The consensus that used to run here — the partial machine

The November 6, 2026 design gave this league five factors. Two were real from the start: F2, the Torvik efficiency projection — possessions set to the mean of the two teams' adjusted tempos, each team's expected points = possessions times (its adjusted offense plus the opponent's adjusted defense minus the league mean) over 100, plus 3.0 home points, from Bart Torvik's free season file; and F5, a schedule-spot score computed from ESPN finals (a rest edge of 2+ days; the opponent played yesterday — its lookahead and cross-time-zone items were never evaluated and counted 0, recorded as such). F3, the same projection from CollegeBasketballData's adjusted ratings, started INACTIVE: CBBD's table for the current season (labeled 2027, its ending year) returned empty at the switch, and the rule activates it automatically when the table serves rows. F4, recent form, was INACTIVE throughout — its input is Torvik's date-range split tool, which has no free route. What actually ran on this league's spreads was therefore a partial overlay of the market factor and the schedule spot. The corrected record graded that overlay at 50.20% cover, −4.08% ROI in one era and 49.87%, −4.78% in the other — NOT SUPPORTED in both. Rule v1.2 switched it off with the rest of the consensus program, and public opinion stopped voting in this league at the same switch. (A November caution from the design also survives in the old records: filings before November 11, 2026 recorded their margin gate against a raised threshold of 9, because the efficiency factors were running on early-season data.)

Data and surfaces

Form and settlement read ESPN finals. Lines read The Odds API. The retired factors read Torvik's free season file and CBBD's adjusted ratings; since the prune, a weekly ratings-snapshot job (first run Monday, November 9, 2026) archives CBBD's adjusted ratings point-in-time so a future ratings method can be tested honestly — it selects nothing today. The league page carries the filed picks, the combos layer's parlays, a line-movement block (first captured line against the latest; history begins November 5–6, 2026; display only) and the captured board, showing the next 20 games. College basketball has no per-league report; its settled record publishes on the sports results page. One honest footnote from the combos record: in the construction backtest behind Combos v1.2, this league's legs supplied more than the whole pooled profit — the parlay guide prints that flag in full.