- Best Way To Bet College Basketball
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- Best Way To Bet College Basketball Team
- College Basketball Best Bets Today
- Ncaa Basketball Best Bets Today
We can look at just a few simple statistics to demonstrate this in betting on basketball. Over the last 10 NBA seasons, teams playing away as underdogs of +12 points or greater have covered the line over 53% of time. We see similar trends in college basketball where underdogs of +17 points or greater similarly have a strike rate of over 53%. And we’re here to help you decide the best way to bet on NCAA basketball in the regular season and the March Madness championship, providing the best and most up-to-date college basketball odds available. Our dedicated team of basketball traders make sure that college basketball fans always have an impressive variety of NCAA markets to bet on.
Team Spread Money Line Total Points Team Points; Thursday, Feb 04, 2021 - NCAA Basketball Game 11:00 PM: 769: Washington State +11-110 +500: Ov: 136-110. College basketball is one of the toughest sports to handicap but also one of the most lucrative if you can learn to do so accurately. Although the sport doesn’t receive much attention before the start of the NCAA Tournament, there is plenty of college basketball that is available for betting before that point.
College basketball handicapping can be a time consuming process. Almost every single team plays on Saturday, giving you over 150 different games to go over. Wednesdays and Thursdays are pretty popular too. If you are giving each game your full attention you will need to put aside several hours to do your analysis.
While we recommend going with an expert with a proven track record of winning, if you are not going to do that then at least use some of the tools below to save some time and make yourself more efficient. While this isn’t a complete list of power rankings, forums, software and systems that can help you win, we think it’s a pretty good start.
Best NCAA Basketball Power Ratings & Ranking Sites
- Ken Pomeroy College Basketball Rankings (pay)- A power ranking system used for predictive purposes to show how strong a team is independent of emotional factors or injuries. It might seem complicated at first but you can quickly get the idea.
- Jeff Sagarin Power Rankings – The popular Sagarin rankings, personally I use the predictor numbers rather than the ratings.
- Hoops Index – Simple power rankings that updates automatically and gives you what they expect the spread to be.
- Time Travel Sports – Easy to use prediction system that gives you who is going to win and by how many according to their rankings.
- Dolphin Predictions – scroll to the bottom to enter the teams you are looking at.
- Logical Approach – Has power rating, performance index, home court values, and more.
- Team Rankings – Use the predictive model to set your factors and come up with a prediction on who is going to win and cover.
CBB Matchups, Statistics, Software & Betting Systems
These sites all have matchup information that you can use. It will help you compare the stats for each team, some give you trends and betting systems on who should cover the spread or whether the game will go over or under the posted total.
- College Hoops Net – Some interesting stories and notes to keep you up to date on what’s happening around the country.
- GoldSheet Historical Data – Logs and Ratings going back to 1995 on teh point spreads and scores of all teams.
- Fox Sports CBB Section – Lot of up to date news on what is happening in the world of college basketball.
- NCAA Division I Sites – Want to check out the latest news on a school? Where better to go than the university site.
- Bracket Board – – I use this when tournament time gets closer to see who is fighting for their lives and who thinks they are comfortably in.
- Vegas Insider CBB Matchups – Can give you a general overview of the teams playing each night.
How We Handicap NCAA College Basketball Games
Betting college basketball isn’t an easy thing to master, but there are several things you can look for when trying to spot winners. Here is a look at a few things I have found to really help my handicapping over the years.
Best Way To Bet College Basketball
Public Perception
There is no doubt that oddsmakers are very good at setting the lines, but many times they will adjust the lines towards one side when they feel the public perception of one team is much higher/lower than their actual value.
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If you have a team that has lost five straight, the public is automatically going to start placing more and more bets on their opponents, but this is exactly what oddsmakers want, soon enough the team that is struggling is going to be getting more points than they should, and this is where handicapping sharks make their money.
Home/Away
Probably one of the biggest factors in college basketball is where the game is played at. Many times you will see teams that are highly ranked giving up way to many points on the road, simply because oddsmakers know that the public will more than likely go with the team that is ranked, even if they are playing a good team on the road.
One of my favorite plays is home underdogs that are very good on the defensive end of the floor. Teams have historically shot worse on the road than they have at home, and when you combine that with excellent defense, you have gained a lot of value on the home team. This tends to work out because people will spend more time looking at a teams overall record, and not factor in so many of the other things that determine the outcome of the game.
Injuries
If you are going to be a successful college basketball handicapper, you have to keep up to date with injury reports for any team you are thinking about placing a bet on. There aren’t a ton of days between games, and many times you won’t know if a player is injured unless he is on your favorite team or is a star player that will show up on ESPN.
You also have to be able to understand how a certain injury will hurt a specific team. A team that has a number of players who score in double figures, the loss of the teams leading scorer will not be as big in this case, but if say he were the only player on the team averaging double digits, than its more than likely going to really hurt his team.
Trends
This is a very popular handicapping tool used by many of the experts, but without incorporating the other factors its not as effective as you might think. If you were to look at the trends for a college basketball game at covers.com, you will see that both teams have trends favoring them to win and trends favoring them to lose. The key here is being able to spot which trends actually factor into the matchup that you are trying to figure out.
For instance say one team has a trend that says they are 13-6 in their last 19 games played on Thursday, while the other team has a trend that says they are 9-5 ATS in their last 14 games as a home underdog of 5.0-10.5. The home underdog trend is a much bigger factor than how a team has done on a certain day. Spotting which trends actually matter takes some practice, but over time this can be an extremely useful tool in helping you profit in college basketball.
Best Way To Bet College Basketball Team
College basketball is becoming one of the most popular sports to bet on due to the fact of the amount of games that are available to place bets on. For a five month span from November to March there is a plethora of games for which to bet every night. For the beginning bettor this can be very intimidating task. With so many options for what games to bet on, the beginning bettor might not know what to look for and be overwhelmed by the amount of choices to choose. However, I will outline what college basketball handicappers can look for in order to make this task less daunting than it may seem.
The most important factor to look at with college basketball is the fact the home court advantage is huge. These college players do not have the same maturity level as the pros that do this for a living. College kids are affected greatly by being away from their home hardwood and might play poorer because of it. Teams that are great at home might not be as good away from home, so remember that before you go and bet on one of the top teams in the nation away from their home court
Another factor that affects the college game and betting more than the pros is the rebound advantage. Teams that are better rebounders in college more often than not win the game. The reason being is the amount of shots missed in college is more than the pros and the team that can pick up those loose balls will be able to capitalize with a win.
You also should be able to learn how to read the schedule. There are three different parts to the college season which will affect the way a team performs. The three parts of the season are the non-conference, conference, and postseason. In non-conference play, college basketball teams will often schedule easier games against lesser opponents to build confidence and pad their resume for a postseason berth later in the season. You can consider this part of the season the warm up games for the better teams; however these games can be games that are harder to predict because of the lack of history between the teams. The next part of the college schedule is the conference schedule, when a team will only play teams from their specific conference. These games are often easier to bet on because these teams are very familiar with each other and in turn will know how to play each other. Finally the final part of the NCAA hoop season is the postseason, when teams that are better will hold nothing back, and should be bet on because of the talent level that they have. A rule of thumb is that the better team will more often than not, win in the postseason.
College Basketball Best Bets Today
An important factor with college basketball betting is the amount motivation that each team has and cannot be taken lightly. Some underdog teams playing on the big stage in a non-conference game might have more motivation that the heavy favorite to make a good showing in order to enhance their tournament resume. Especially in non-conference games is when this comes into play, because it allows the little guy to make a little noise. So keep this in mind when betting on basketball games in November and December.
Also make sure you look around for the best games to lay down money on. With so many games every night the possibilities of which games to bet on seem endless. This can be used to your advantage. In other sports where there is a limited amount of games, the lines can be affected much more by bettors throwing money on one particular team. However with so many games in college basketball every night this does not happen as often. So if you see a college basketball game you would like to bet on and the line looks soft, then bet on it. With so many games on the table, even the odds maker have a hard time setting the correct lines and the more experienced bettors will find these games and jump all over them.
Look at the tempo of both teams as well. If a team plays a very up-tempo game with a lot of run and gun against a team that is not able to keep up because they play more of a half court set and try to move the ball around then something will have to give. Look at past times this has occurred for each team and who was more successful in getting the other team to play their type of game, if a basketball team has to play out of character more times than not they will not be successful in defeating the other team.
Finally, do not be afraid to pass on a college game, there are so many choices that you do not have to bet on all of them. Only bet the games you are comfortable with and also do not feel that you must bet on the big name teams. The betting action will very heavy on the big name games, such as North Carolina-Duke, but the payout is exactly the same on those high profile games versus if you bet games involving mid-major conference teams.When it comes to college basketball handicapping and betting, you need to be in control of your choices.