How to bet college basketball

There is no wrong or right way to bet on college basketball. Strategies and results vary year by year. There are many teams you can bet on throughout the year in Division 1 basketball. You can find a full list of these teams and their team pages by clicking on our link college basketball teams.

The Big Games

Basketball fans love to bet on the big team names like Duke, Uconn, North Carolina, and others. However, you’ll notice successful handicappers that will give out top plays from lower match ups. The reason for that is that the odds maker’s lines are extremely sharp in these games because they know that the majority of the bets will come in on these games. There is a lot of value all over the board especially on a Saturday where that can be upwards of 100 games with odds to bet on.

Sometimes you may not recognize the schools or conferences, but that is the reason we have given you a full list of college basketball teams. Studying a team’s schedule is another key factor in handicapping a college basketball team. There are many small conference schools that try to schedule challenging non-conference games to get their name out there and many times they’ll go on a losing streak only to open up their conference schedule on fire. This is an advantage many handicappers take advantage of. Most of the time bettors look at a team’s record and bet. While the better team may be getting a few extra points because they have a worse record and the public is on the other team. These are great opportunities in college basketball betting.

Recognize a Trap:

First things first is to recognize a trap game. My favorite thing in handicapping mid-week college basketball games is realizing when the public is all over a ranked team on the road playing a conference opponent on ESPN. The game is televised and is on home court in a conference battle. Those are two huge factors in recent years in college basketball. If you see a team that is a favorite in this situation that you are kind of scratching your head about because A. they are not ranked and B. the opponent is, then you know it’s because home court is a huge advantage. This is where Vegas will make its money. The public jumps on the road team that’s ranked. The polls were a savvy invention to rank teams that are completely inaccurate. Teams jump in and out of the Top 25 poll all year long. For example Texas which was a #1 ranked team earlier in the year finished barely inside the Top 25 in 2010. Just goes to show you how accurate these rankings are. My rule, pay no attention to the ranking.

Conference play:

The start of the season is the non-conference schedule, but once the conference schedule starts the season really starts to get serious and fun. This will allow handicappers to gauge the statistics and match ups against similar talent.

Revenge play, this is typically when one conference team loses to another and then plays each other later in the season. More often than not Vegas will give you a larger line because that team lost the first game but the team that lost the first game will come with more intensity. It’s a solid strategy that I like to use in many sports.

Make sure you are aware of the conference standings. This is a huge factor when teams can’t afford to lose any more games in conference. Whether they are trying to get into the conference tournament or NCAA tournament, it is important to be aware of what’s going on inside the conference.

NCAA Tourney tips

Here are some important factors to pay attention to in tournament games.

Road play: It’s important to check home/road play for college hoop teams. Some teams may just not rebound or play as well on defense on the road while others play better on the road in that year. It is important to know this because practically all the games are on the road once a team enters tournament play.

Non-conference competition: It is helpful to know whether or not that team had a challenging non-conference schedule. In the tournament teams will meet other teams from other conferences and if you have nothing to gauge competition on it can be difficult to handicap. The Sun Belt Conference is an example of a low conference, take North Texas as a team out of that conference.. If they faced some Big 12 and Conference USA top opponents than it is more impressive going into the tournament. Also you may find that when they did play those teams they were blown off the court. That is critical because then you will know whether or not they can hang with their match up.

Location: Sometimes a team will get lucky and play close to home. The recent example I can think of is Cornell in the 2010 tournament that got to play in Buffalo, NY and won both games. They faced Temple from Philadelphia, PA, and Wisconsin who are both pretty far away from Buffalo. Many Cornell fans showed up to the game and it was similar to a home court environment.