College Hoops Strategies
By Tom Grassi
Sportspic.com
There are a number of different strategies to utilize when handicapping college basketball. No matter which strategy a handicapper utilizes the ultimate goal is to consistently be on the winning side.
Before we discuss some of our college hoops strategies, let’s take a minute to define consistency. No one handicapping basketball, or any sport, picks winners all the time. Our goal is to make money over time. Even the top handicappers have losing streaks, but the key is to minimize the losing streaks and at the end of a period of time have a plus in front of your figure.
Now let’s get to some of our college basketball handicapping strategies. Every day we review every college game on the betting board. That’s right, every single game even when you have a Saturday with well over 60 games. You never know when you will find that one or two games where the sportsbooks have posted a bad betting line. We are looking for line value that puts us on the right side of the game.
As we look at games most of the time we don’t consider games with ridiculous high point spreads, normally dismissing games with where the betting line is 15 or more.
The very first thing that we look at is the team’s game logs. A quick peek at the team’s last five to ten games will show you how a team is playing currently. In college basketball, teams go through periods where they are playing very well, or very poorly. We look at those most recent games and the situations involving those games such as travel, types of losses, opponents, stats of those most recent games, or anything else that can help us predict how a team is going to play today, or the game that we are handicapping.
Another item we review is how teams play at home or on the road. A lot of teams for a number of reasons play very well on their home court or very poorly away, either at a neutral court or in a true road game. For example, on February 15th we were looking at the Tennessee versus Arkansas game where the Vols were playing at home. Tennessee was 13-12 straight up on the season but 11-3 at home SU and a very impressive 9-2 against the betting line. Meanwhile, Arkansas is one of the worst road teams in the country posting a 0-8 SU record and covered the betting line only once in those eight games. Back to Tennessee and playing at home, their shooting numbers were outstanding connecting on 46% of their shots and a remarkable 37% from behind the 3-point line. The Sportsbooks had Tennessee as only 6-point favorites while our projections had Tennessee winning by double digits or more. We released Tennessee as a Super Strong SEC Game of the Month and they delivered with a 20-point win.
Another key component is the revenge factor, where you look at the result of the two teams in a previous game. A previous game would be an earlier meeting this season, or the last time they played last year. We consider same season revenge a much more important factor than a game the two teams played the previous season. However, past season revenge can be important if it was a conference tournament game, or a very bad loss or win as a favorite or dog.
On February 17, New Mexico hosted the top 25 ranked UNLV Runnin Rebels. These two teams played earlier this season in Vegas and UNLV crushed New Mexico by 15 points. However, New Mexico was playing much better basketball this time around while UNLV had been struggling. We threw these factors into our mix, along with others and our model had New Mexico winning by 10 or more points. We released New Mexico as a Super Strong selection and they game through big time crushing UNLV 65-45 as only four point favorites.
While were discussing revenge, let’s take a look at when playing into revenge is not a factor. On Sunday, February 18 Michigan State went to Purdue to face the Boilermakers. Purdue was playing with big time revenge having lost at Michigan State 83-58. If you looked a little further into that game you would have noticed that Purdue couldn’t crack the Michigan State defense as they shot only 29% from the floor. In addition to Purdue not being able to matchup with Michigan State, the Spartans were on a roll winning four straight with three of those wins against quality opponents. Meanwhile, Purdue hadn’t beaten a quality conference opponent all year. Therefore, we went against the revenge factor and played on Michigan State and they won 76-62 easily covering the 4-point betting line.
We’ve had an outstanding college basketball season highlighted by our Super Strong selections which are our top rated Game of the Month and Game of the Year plays. When we have a number of our factors aligned we release a top play. This year we are a perfect 5-0 against the betting line with our Game of the Year selections and 7-2 with our Game of the Month predictions for an aggregate total of 12 wins and only 2 losses for a net winning percentage of 86%.
The college basketball season is winding down with a couple weeks of conference play remaining before the conference tournaments. Then, it’s March Madness with the start of the NCAA Tournament.