Estimating Vegas' win total for Oklahoma in 2015
Yesterday, I offered up guesstimates of where I figured bookmakers would open the point spreads in Oklahoma's games this season. Now, I'm going to use those projected point spreads to put together a projected win total for the Sooners.
I've written about this process in the past. Essentially, I use the line on each game to come up with the likelihood of a straight-up win using Phil Steele's percentages derived from actual results. (You can also use SBR's conversion tool.) The percentage translates into a "share" of a win for each game. For instance, teams favored by 7.5 to 10 points win outright 73.6 percent of the time, so a team favored by 8.5 points over an opponent would receive .736 of a projected win.
At the end, I sum up the win shares to produce an estimated win total.
Here's what I came up with for this season. Again, note that this is what I'm anticipating the linesmakers will do, not necessarily my own numbers.
By my count, that works out to 8.9 wins, so call it 9. I would look for Vegas sportsbooks to offer win totals of either 9.5 juiced to the under or 8.5 juiced to the over.