TNF Same Game Parlay & College Basketball Preview

Scott Seidenberg and Greg Peterson build a Same Game Parlay for Packers vs Panthers and Greg previews the upcoming College Basketball Season with betting advice.

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🏆 THE MILWAUKEE BREWERS ARE WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS

Brewers 4, Rays 1. Series over, 4-1. The first championship in franchise history — and they didn't need to go home to get it.

Tampa Bay forced a Game 5 by stealing a 12-inning marathon. It cost them everything they had left. The Rays managed four hits. They didn't score until the ninth inning, long after it mattered.

Jacob Misiorowski got the clinch and was untouchable: 5.2 innings, zero runs, two hits, one walk, 86 pitches. Milwaukee broke it open in the sixth against the back of a bullpen that had nothing left — two Tampa relievers combined to face a handful of hitters and give up five hits and three runs.

🥇 World Series MVP: William Contreras

He hit .381 for the series and drove in a run with a double in the clincher, and he becomes just the eighth catcher ever voted World Series MVP — the first since Salvador Perez in 2015, joining Gene Tenace, Johnny Bench, Steve Yeager, Darrell Porter, Rick Dempsey and Pat Borders.

The credential nobody has ever had before: this was the first World Series played with the automated ball-strike challenge system, and Contreras went 10-for-13 on appeals. A catcher won the MVP of a World Series partly on his ability to know, in real time, which pitches the machine would give back to him. That is a brand-new skill, and the first man to be rewarded for it is a Brewer.

🧀 THURSDAY NIGHT: PACKERS −3.5 vs. PANTHERS

Total 47.5 at Lambeau. Greg's position before we started building: he already has Packers −3.5 — but he likes the under better.

"I don't see why this total is 47 and a half"

Greg: "The Packers have been by no means world beaters in terms of their offense. The defense has been fine. Go back last week against the Lions — the Lions are one of the most high-powered offenses in all of football, and the Packers were more than adequate enough to win that game. They blow it because their kicker misses multiple field goals."

And on Carolina: "Ever since the Panthers got lit up like a Christmas tree in Week 1 against the Bears, that defense has been much better as well. I just feel like that's way too high of a total, especially with these teams coming off a short week."

Scott's adjustment on the 43 points Carolina gave up to Tampa Bay last week: nine of those points weren't scored against the defense — there was a defensive touchdown for Tampa plus a two-point conversion on the other side of a defensive play. So the real number is 32, not 43. Still not good. But it's a materially different data point than the one the box score hands you.

⭐ THE SAME-GAME PARLAY

Greg on leg 2: "If this game script goes the way I think it's going to — I think the Packers win, I don't think it's a 14-plus-point win, but I think they take a lead throughout. You're going to be pounding the rock. It's getting colder out there in the Midwest. Not quite the frozen tundra yet, but not the world's greatest conditions either. And the Panthers have not been great, to say the least, at stopping anyone on the ground."

Greg on leg 3 — an honest hedge: "It's not one that I personally will play, but I also don't hate it either. The Panthers are probably going to be trailing quite a bit, and I expected more out of the Panthers ground game this year as well — all those backs they have just have not been able to produce. They've been in a lot of must-pass situations with the way things have gone the last few weeks."

And on Young himself: "He really has been able to take a lot of strides forward over the last 12 months. It's very clear that the coaches he had early in his career were not doing him any favors whatsoever. Green Bay is sort of a bend-but-don't-break defense — they gave up quite a few opportunities against the Lions, not necessarily in the red zone but within the 30, 35 yard line. Fortunately the Lions went for it and missed on at least one fourth down in the second half."

📎 The standalone Greg actually wants: Jordan Love, no interception

This was his fourth-leg suggestion before we found out it can't be combined into the SGP, so play it on its own:

Greg: "He does a much better job protecting the ball in the second half of the season. And the Carolina pass defense has not been great, to say the least. Plus we like Josh Jacobs to get the ball a lot — that means fewer opportunities for Jordan Love to throw an interception."

Same thesis, different wrapper. The Love under 1.5 passing touchdowns went into the parlay instead, which is why the fourth leg only moved the price from +664 to +1102 — it's correlated with the three legs already in there. That's the trade-off: correlation gets you a cleaner thesis and a smaller bump.

🏀 HOOPS TIME: THE COLLEGE BASKETBALL SEASON OPENS SUNDAY

Greg handicaps a line on every single game of the college basketball season. Here's the top of the board before it starts.

Is there a dominant team? No.

Greg: "I think it's going to be a relatively open season, because that's just the day and age we live in. Go back last year — Michigan was that dominant team toward the early part of the season, but they weren't the number one team even coming into the season. Heck, they weren't even picked number one in the Big Ten. That was actually Purdue, who didn't have necessarily the season they were hoping for."

His No. 1: Florida

They bring back essentially everyone but Walter Clayton from the national title game two years ago. The forward who could have been a lottery pick is back. Denzel Aberdeen, part of that title team, returns to stabilize the backcourt. The one hole: three-point shooting.

Nipping at their heels: Duke

After a 35-plus-point exhibition win over Tennessee. "They absolutely drounced him." That is a real thing to know about a team that opens as the betting favorite.

⭐ THE UNDERVALUED TEAM: VIRGINIA

⭐ "Virginia is a team that I think is coming in undervalued. I think they're a prime Final Four contender."

The case: a lot of returning chemistry, a backcourt piece in Chance Mallory who Greg thinks takes a real step forward, and a coach with a résumé.

Ryan Odom was a winner at UMBC — where he became the first 16-seed ever to win an NCAA tournament game — then at VCU, then at Utah State.

And the reason Virginia is the pick ties into the whole framework:

Greg: "You're going to notice a theme with a lot of the teams I like in college basketball this year. Chemistry. Camaraderie. Not dealing with the tomfoolery of these fifth-year court cases. Actually building chemistry on the court, not having to fight court cases. That I think is going to be so important this year. Virginia fits that mold."

🔴 ST. JOHN'S (#13): THE ANSWER IS IN A COURTROOM

Greg: "A lot of it is going to be dependent on what happens off the court."

The eligibility file:

• A fifth-year forward, an Auburn transfer who averaged 18-plus points and seven-plus rebounds on mid-30s three-point shooting, is currently playing on a temporary restraining order
• Quinn Ellis should be good to go
• A third piece's eligibility is still unresolved — "that's going to be key"

Greg: "If they keep these guys out there on the court, they have a chance to win the Big East once again and make that Final Four run. If these guys don't stay out there on the floor, that is going to be very rough for St. John's."

The basketball problem underneath it: point guard question marks again, and the loss of Zuby Ejiofor, who was dominant down low. "They still have great size. You know Rick Pitino is going to get his team to play really good defense — there's never any question about that. But the question is, what are you going to get from the outside?Can they elevate that three-point shooting even just a little bit? I do think so."

🌍 NEUTRAL-SITE GAMES: THE EARLY-SEASON MINEFIELD

Sunday, 6:30 a.m. Pacific: Notre Dame vs. Villanova in Rome, Italy — the Eternal City Tipoff. Villanova −7.5.

Greg: "It doesn't get much more neutral than Rome, Italy. Sometimes you look at a 'neutral court' game like Gonzaga versus Kentucky and they're playing in Washington, they're playing in Tennessee — one team has a little bit of an advantage. This is as neutral as it gets."

⭐ THE DATABASE PULL

Scott ran it through the database. Top-25 teams that are favorites in neutral-site games in November, since 2021:

⭐ Be wary of the favorites. It's early. We don't know how good these teams are just because there's a number next to their name — that number came from a preseason poll.

Greg's corroboration: "Look no further than when North Carolina was a preseason number one team and missed the NCAA tournament altogether."

What Greg handicaps in a neutral-court game

The core insight: three-point shooting is less reliable in these venues — completely different sight lines, plus jet lag taking something out of the legs. So he goes looking for teams whose scoring doesn't depend on it.

The checklist:

• Teams that defend inside
• Teams that don't allow second and third chance opportunities
• Teams that get to the free throw line
• Teams that take two-point shots rather than three-point shots
• Teams that do a good job on the boards and grab second and third chances themselves

Greg: "The three-point shooting reliability just is not there when you're on a funky court like you're going to be on Sunday in Rome."

And the one he flagged for comedy and for the same reason: Monday's midnight Eastern tipoff, High Point vs. Liberty. "Want to talk about a game where the three-point shooting might not be great, to say the least. If you've ever played midnight basketball — that's actually going to be happening to start the college basketball season."

🧮 THE FRAMEWORK: BUY AND SELL COLLEGE BASKETBALL TEAMS LIKE STOCKS

Greg's expectation-setter, via Mid-Major Matt from his podcast:

⭐ "Your best wins and your worst losses are going to come early in the season."

Greg: "You can't be upset if you have a few whiffs early on. It's going to happen. There are 365 Division I teams. You're not going to go 365 for 365 in terms of gauging chemistry. The key is being a bit above 52.4% so that you're profitable — and taking a look at what sorts of things you looked at in terms of chemistry and gelling that worked and what did not."

The chemistry spectrum

Greg: "Those are the teams you want to fade" — the roster-churn teams. "Forget about us as bettors trying to figure them out. They need to figure out what they have themselves."

And here's the part most people miss

⭐ "After you fade those teams for a month or two, a lot of bettors are going to be down on them. They're going to undervalue them as they pick up chemistry. That's where you find a good buy point on them. Much like the stock market — you want to sell high on a lot of these teams that have early-season hype with all these transfers coming in, and you want to buy in on the known commodities that maybe aren't grabbing the headlines, but just did everything right and were workmanlike in the offseason."

That's a two-sided trade, not a season-long bias. Fade the churn in November and December. Then, when the market has soured on them and the chemistry has actually arrived, buy them back. Most people who identify the first half of that trade never execute the second half.

🏆 GREG'S COLLEGE BASKETBALL SURVIVOR CONTEST

A survivor pool for hoops, and the structure is worth a look.

Greg: "I recognize if you take a random game in Hawaii, trying to wake up and place that Sunday game might be a little bit difficult. So we made it easy for you there."

Do the math on that doubling clause. At 243 entries, $11 each, you're looking at a prize pool many multiples of the money in the pot. If it fills to 1,000, the pool doubles while the entry fee doesn't — the field grows by a factor of four and the prize grows with it. That's the rare contest where you should actively want more competition. Run in partnership with the Sharps.

Greg's handicaps, video breakdowns and everything else: @GUnit_81 on X.

📅 Coming Up

College basketball season opens Sunday. We are in the process of building out College Basketball HQ — same as our other sports: fully loaded with databases, projections and matchup analysis, with Greg "Hoops" Peterson's assistance.

Sunday, 6:30 a.m. PT: Notre Dame vs. Villanova in Rome. Monday, midnight ET: High Point vs. Liberty.

Bettor Day Fall Special: $25 off your first month of a premium membership at betterday.com.