College Hoops Betting Notes & Quotes
By Tedddy Covers
Sports bettors hear a million quotes from players and coaches a week. Some of those quotes are just fluff. Others are mere posturing before the big game. But sometimes, a quote can give you insight into how a game will play out.
Check out what notable quotables are catching the ears of Las Vegas wise guys heading into this week's college hoops schedule.
Rolling Tide
Heading into Thursday’s showdown at LSU, Alabama has won six out of seven and 11 of its last 13 games. This is a completely different team than the squad that opened the season with losses to Seton Hall, Iowa, St Peter’s, Purdue, Providence and Oklahoma State, all before Christmas.
Obviously, that 5-6 SU, 1-7 ATS start to the season has affected the Tide’s power ratings, leaving them as a dramatically undervalued commodity in recent weeks. This team has morphed into a quality squad, yet the betting markets continue to lag behind.
“I don’t think anybody can look at our team and say we’ve won because of the offense. We’ve been a grind-it-out team that’s won because of what we’ve done on the defensive end,” head coach Anthony Grant told reporters.
Albama has allowed 70-plus points only twice in SEC play. Its defensive pressure in the 65-60 OT win at Tennessee earlier this month was positively stifling. The Crimson Tide hold foes to 36.8 percent shooting, which ranks third in the nation.
Alabama has also learned to win tough games on the road in recent weeks, after struggling away from home in November and December. It’s won at Tennessee, Mississippi State and Auburn in conference play and has wins over SEC East powerhouse Kentucky as well as South Carolina.
“I think we’ve learned how to win. We went through a lot at the beginning of the season, and every night we come out, we just remember that. We don’t want to be in that same position again. I think that just gives us more fight,” point guard Trevor Releford told the media.
Slumping Saints
With over 250 teams on the betting boards, the markets are inevitably going to make mistakes. And, unlike the financial markets or the professional sports markets, it takes a long time for a mispriced team to get valued correctly. Sports betting is not a particularly efficient marketplace.
Examples of high-profile mispriced teams in recent weeks include Michigan State (2-9 ATS L11), George Mason (13-0 ATS L13), UNLV (1-7 ATS L8) and Texas (8-2 ATS L10). The prevailing thought process is simply to repeatedly support or fade these mispriced teams again and again until the betting markets catch up.
Siena has been a mispriced team all year. The Saints spent the last half decade as the powerhouse of the MAAC, a SU and ATS juggernaut for extended stretches. This year, after losing their head coach, suffering enormous graduation losses and dealing with a series of key injuries, the Saints are 10-16 SU - a far cry from the 27-win team they’ve been in each of the last two years.
Against the spread, Siena has been particularly inept as a favorite. The Saints have been chalk on 11 different occasions and are 0-11 ATS in those ballgames.
Siena’s home court has not been strong. It’s cashed only two tickets in 11 lined games on this floor. After another home loss to St Peter’s Wednesday, there’s no reason to expect any sort of late-season turnaround for the slumping Saints.
Lucky Ducks
Oregon finished tied for eighth place in the Pac-10 last year after finishing dead last the previous season. Head coach Ernie Kent was given his walking papers and new head coach Dana Altman found the cupboards relatively bare upon his arrival.
The Ducks stumbled repeatedly during non-conference play, suffering some ugly losses, including home defeats to the likes of San Jose State and Idaho. Then the Ducks opened up Pac-10 play by losing their first four games, three of those defeats coming by double-digit margins. This was not a team that the betting markets were supporting in any way, shape or form.
Things have changed dramatically for Dana Altman’s team in recent weeks. The Ducks are 6-3 SU in their last nine games. All six of those SU wins came with the Ducks in the underdog role. They’ve notched road wins at USC, Oregon State and Stanford within the last month. Yet Oregon hasn’t been favored even once since a loss to Arizona State on New Year’s Day.
“To their credit, they don’t just stay in one place - they adjust it, they’re smart that way,” said Cal head coach Mike Montgomery, talking about the Ducks’ defensive pressure. “The other thing is, you know they’re going to (pressure) for 40 minutes. It’s not going to go away, they’re not going to go away, they’re not going to quit doing it.