Rockets Ride Randomness

Seven Away wins in League Two last night will have been appreciated by some readers, taking the profits for the season so far up to at least 10.26 points and an ROI commensurate with previous seasons.

Quite a contrast to League One where eight of the twelve matches were Draws, and the other four all Home wins.

Meanwhile in India, one of Crystal Palace's many stars of the future - Nya Kirby - saw England through to the U-17 World Cup quarter-finals (v USA), scoring the decisive penalty in the shoot-out after what appears to have been a thrilling game based on the AP updates:

Edge of the seat stuff, but the attendance of 53,000 was impressive.

In the NBA, the Over 215.5 System, henceforth to be known as the Beast (I'm sure some of you can work out why) got off to a winning start as the Golden State Warriors, after leading by 17 points and trading at 1.03, lost to the Houston Rockets 121-122 in a game where the Total was set at 228.5. 

These two teams were the top scoring last season, and I doubt that they will all be this easy. 

The Houston Rockets took the most three point shots last season, an average of 40.3 and last night shot 41. The Warriors 30 shots was very close to their average last season of 31.2.

Last night's game saw 71 three-point shots, with 83 points scored.

Line ups change of course, but fortunately player statistics are readily available. For example, Kyrie Irving played for the Boston Celtics against his former team (Cleveland Cavaliers) last night. His loss was one good reason why the Cavaliers took fewer three point shots. No surprise that his game was comfortably under.

For the record, last season, the average number of three point shots per game was 54, with 58 points resulting from them. 

As legendary NBA bettor Haralabos Voulgaris explained at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in 2013, the nature of scoring in basketball is evolving, and because randomness plays a bigger role in three point shots, it's becoming harder to predict which team will score more points.