Next to maybe just the NFL and NBA professional leagues, wagering on college basketball generates a great deal of the action that sportsbooks take in over the course of its entire season. While wagering on the NBA verse NCAAB has its similarities, there are a few betting tips designed specifically for the college game that can provide an edge to anyone who loves to bet on the sport of basketball.
The first betting tip is probably one of the most productive and easiest betting systems there is for college basketball. The basic premise is to wager on an unranked favorite at home in a matchup against a ranked team playing on the road. The rational for this bet is that the home team has to be pretty good to be favored against the ranked opponent. That same home team will also be highly motivated to post a quality win that could help its overall resume come NCAA Tournament time in March. Past results on bets such as this over the course of an entire season have provided a success rate of over 60 percent on a number of occasions.
As a follow-up to that bet, you then want to go against that same home team in its next outing if it did indeed cover against the spread in that original matchup against the ranked team. The rational here is that a big victory like that is often times followed by a deflating loss given the amount of both emotional and physical energy spent on getting that win in the first place. Basketball at the college level is still driven by the highs and lows that permeate throughout the entire season and these are two ways to capitalize on this roller-coaster ride.
Some bettors prefer to sit back and wait until conference play begins in the college basketball season because things become a bit more predictable when all the teams have a number of games under their belts. If you are the type of bettor that is looking for a fast start right out of the gate, then there are a couple of things to look for from any particular team.
First, you need to study a team’s roster in terms of returning players and overall experience. Teams with a number of experienced starters are much more likely to play well in their first few games as opposed to a team that is still trying to put all the new pieces of the puzzle together.
The next thing that you want to look for is teams with a returning big man that can control the game in the paint. Stay away from matchups where both teams do a good job under the boards and focus on the ones where this ‘big’ has a golden opportunity to have a major impact on the outcome of the game.
This could also be said for teams that have a prolific scorer that is returning from the previous season. It is even better if a team returns of few of its top scorers from a year ago. In both of these scenarios your overall focus should be on the quality of the returning starters on a team as opposed to the quantity of starters that are back from the previous year.
The final betting tip for betting on college basketball is understanding the role that ‘strength of schedule’ plays in breaking down any matchup. A major program can roll through the nonconference portion of its schedule in the beginning of the year and be a prime candidate to go against once conference play begins. Good teams that consistently test themselves by playing against quality opponents tend to only get better as the season wears on.
This measure applies to both conference and nonconference play. There are seasons when the ACC may only have one or two high-quality teams, so those top program’s statistics may tend to overvalue that team when the NCAA Tournament rolls around. Strength of schedule ratings can be vastly different than national poll rankings which are more about overall wins and losses. You should always defer to a team’s strength of schedule as one of your primary handicapping tools for college basketball.
