How To Bet On College Basketball
Posted by
bleuze
Posted on Sun, Feb 9, 2020
In terms of sheer numbers, no sport matches the opportunity, intrigue,
depth of quality, or endless variety involved with college basketball
betting. Nearly every day of the week, from mid-November through March,
bettors and sports books match bankrolls on the hardwood fortunes of 235
teams in more than a dozen conferences.
While number crunching and detailed analysis always are essential tools in college basketball betting, a degree of "art"
compliments the "science" and is helpful, too. The successful bettor
understands that subjective analysis of a number of other factors also
must be considered.
Let's look at a number of these elements:
Teams:
Competition all but mandates that a sports book posts prices on over
200 teams, (as compared to 30 NBA clubs) providing the gambler with many
more options. For bettors, it is a lot easier to find a bad number
among 100 games than it is to find one among 13 or 14.
That is why I suggest that you follow your local small college basketball conference - seldom followed by the books!
Home:
Sure, the home court is a factor in NBA play but it is the tiresome
travel associated with getting to a road game that puts the visiting
team at a disadvantage in the pro ranks. For that reason, NBA spreads
are affected more by schedule than by actual home court.
Since NCAA teams only play about 30 games a year, lengthy road trips are NOT
a factor in college play. Nevertheless, with its requisite contingent
of chanting, sign-waving students, the home court really does matter in
college basketball betting. In fact, the home court can be such an
advantage that there may be as much as a 10-point swing in home-and-home
series point spreads.
Morale: A shorter schedule and more heated
rivalries, particularly within conferences or states, all but
guarantees that emotion, especially when you are dealing with
impressionable teenagers, will play a greater role in college basketball
than it does in the NBA. For that reason, assessing a team's motivation
can be a crucial factor in college basketball betting.
Revenge:
Another factor unique to college basketball is revenge. A team that lost
to an opponent once often is troublesome to tame the second time
around. This is a scenario that plays itself out in conference play,
where splits are more common than sweeps.
Freshmen: Time was that
first year recruits sat on the pine and waited their turn. Nowadays, if
you are good enough to play, coaches put you in the game.
Interestingly,
the emergence of freshmen as major contributors has required sports
books and bettors to track the careers of high school seniors,
monitoring their college choices and assessing the impact they may have
on those programs.
Since no sport is more affected by a single
player than basketball, every new addition--freshman, junior college or
transfer--has the opportunity to alter the dynamic of the team.
Three-for-all:
Further complicating the oddsmaking and betting equation is that
college basketball is much more like a three-act play than a seamless
season.
Act I begins in mid-November and extends through the end
of the year when teams play most of their non-conference games. For
teams still seeking an identity, this is a chance for experimentation
with different lineups and strategies, a time of growing pains that
often are reflected by the point spread. Other teams, ones with
experienced players, have an obvious advantage in cohesiveness. After
all, basketball is a team sport.
Act II begins with the tip-off
of the conference schedule, which starts in January. Teams have worked
out the kinks by now and, for the most part, are ready to face a series
of opponents with whom they have some familiarity. The teams may play
each other as many as two or three times each season--twice in
conference play and perhaps again in the league's tournament--and
coaches know each other and their preferred style of play. There are few
surprises and, except for those occasions when the very best teams are
playing the very worst teams, close games are common.
For the
fortunate, the curtain will rise for Act III, the NCAA Men's Basketball
Tournament, in March. It is the unpredictable nature of the >"Big
Dance," the convergence of teams which makes "March Madness" the oddsmaking and sports betting challenge that it is.
Because
of its uniqueness, bet makers and bet takers approach the tournament
both respectful and wary of an entirely different set of factors that
rarely come into play during college basketball's regular season.