With teams having played a dozen or more conference games, the linemaker has plenty of stats to work with, and college basketball lines are pretty accurate right now. We’ll see a lot of results decided by the shape of the game or the bounce of the ball in the next couple of weeks.

For instance, last night Louisville went on a 9-0 run to close their game against tired Syracuse, covering the -9.5 spread when a dunk in the closing seconds made the score 61-50. But if you had Syracuse did you really deserve to cover a game in which your team shot 29.1% and was outrebounded 53-35? Syracuse may just be wearing down, remember that three of their projected starters were out for the season by Christmas, leaving them with an extremely young team.

When it comes to the shape of the game, if you had the under in the Xavier’s 81-77 win over Rhode Island, you don’t want to know about the 26 points scored in the last 1:15 in that one, as the game shape required URI to be fouling and launching, fouling and launching. Key to the Musketeer win was the tremendous 23 minutes put in by Josh Duncan, who scored 23 points and is 15-15 from the field in scoring 45 points in Xavier’s last two games. 6-9, 235-pound Duncan hadn’t scored more than 16 points in a game since November, but the senior seems to be peaking 115 games into his career. Meanwhile, URI’s consistently productive senior Jimmy Baron was held without a field goal for the first time, after scoring in the double-digits in 23 of the Rams first 25 games.

Sure, the Missouri Valley Conference is down this season, but what Drake has done is astounding. Drake leads the MVC in offense, defense, steals, turnover margin, and 3-point field goals made. The Bulldogs have a stranglehold on the conference regular season title, with a 4-game land in the standings.

Highly publicized family coaching handoffs have had mixed results (Washington State, great. Oklahoma State, not so good. Texas Tech, too early to tell) but Drake’s Keno Davis has been a remarkable success taking over for his dad, Dr. Tom Davis. Going 17-15 last season in the elder Davis’ final season was Drake’s first winning season since Reagan was president. Now the Bulldogs are 23-2 with a 21-game winning streak recently broken. And the success has gotten little attention nationally, though folks in Des Moines seem to be having a blast. Bettors are having fun, as well, as the Bulldogs are 16-4-1 against the spread.

Comments(0)

Arizona: In their game against Cal tonight, Arizona is without two key players. You probably know about point guard Nic Wise’s injury, but Bret Brielmaier’s separated shoulder is as big a key, according to well-named Arizona coach Kevin O’Neill. The Wildcats have had more than their share of injuries this season.

UAB: Robert Vaden, UAB’s best player, sat out the Blazers non-covering win at Rice with a groin injury. They’re hoping he can go this weekend. A side note, UAB’s win was seen by 119 people. The game was played at Reliant Arena, capacity 8,500. Rice is without a home court this year.

Kentucky: What was Kentucky coach Billy Gillespie thinking Tuesday night? Jodie Meeks has been unable to get back into the lineup due to a hip flexor, yet Gillespie inserted him into the lineup with the Wildcats down 40. Why?

Valpo: It might be wise to write off Valparaiso’s 24-point loss at Illinois-Chicago on Monday night. The Crusaders had “several starters fighting a viral infection” according to the Post-Tribune of Gary, Indiana .

Comments(0)

“Traveling partner” scheduling permits college basketball conferences to save on travel costs and have some structure and simplicity in their scheduling. For example, Arizona and Arizona State will either travel to the same locale for two games (against, say Washington and Washington State) or host the same other traveling partners (like Stanford and Cal) on the same weekend, with the weekend staring on Thursday in the Pac Ten.

Tonight homestanding Penn is favored by 2.5 points over Princeton. Princeton and Penn are traveling partners in the Ivy League, and are both 2-2 in conference play, each winning a pair of home games while dropping two road games. Both teams opened with a sweep of traveling partners Dartmouth and Harvard before losing at traveling partners Cornell and Columbia.

Princeton has performed better than Penn in all four games.

• Princeton beat Harvard by 14, Penn beat them by 4.
• Princeton beat Dartmouth by 4, Penn beat them by 2.
• Princeton lost to Cornell by 11, Penn lost to them by 13.
• Princeton lost to Columbia by 5, Penn lost to them by 16.

Obviously, by outperforming Penn in all four games, Princeton has a lot of statistical edges in this game. So why aren’t we betting the Tigers? Well, we thought about it, but there are a couple of reasons that we stayed off the game.

Penn’s leading scorer, freshman named Tyler Bernardini, missed last weekend’s games at Cornell and Columbia, and Bernardini may return tonight. Obviously not having him last weekend was an impediment to Penn’s success, and his possible return tonight may offer a boost. The fact that both teams may not be at full strength when they play opponents is obviously one of the reasons that traveling partner analysis is far from perfect.

There’s also the small matter of Penn’s record at home against their fellow Ivy Leaguers. The Quakers have won 23 straight conference games at the Palestra, and are 104-9 in their last 113 conference contests at home. Taking only 2.5 points against the Quakers may not be wise with such home dominance having been shown, even if Penn is a shadow of their former self, as the Princeton program is down as well.

So keep an eye on traveling partners in college basketball and know that they can be compared pretty accurately. But matchups, injuries, home court, and intangibles are obviously factors that should be taken into account when handicapping any sporting event.

Comments(0)

Clemson Carnage: In double OT, North Carolina beat Clemson 103-93 as a 9.5-point favorite. North Carolina overcame a 15-point second half lead by outscoring Clemson from the line 31-1. Despite 29 fewer attempts, the Tigers (1-7) missed more free throws than the homestanding Tar Heels (31-36). North Carolina, playing without PG Ty Lawson, enjoyed a unique Triple Double by Tyler Hansbrough, who had double digits in field gals (11), free throws (17), and rebounds (13) while scoring 39 points in 47 minutes.

Ivy Dominator a Pointspread Failure: Cornell is undefeated in Ivy League play, but disappointed their backers at home this weekend, failing to cover by a half-point in a Friday night 72-61 win over Princeton and falling short to the spread by a point in a 87-74 Saturday night win over Princeton.

SEC Coaches Feel Heat: The dismissal of LSU’s John Brady less than two years after leading the Tigers to the Final Four has escalated the heat on Georgia’s Dennis Felton and Alabama’s Mark Gottfried. Felton, a strict disciplinarian, inherited Jim Harrick’s mess but now has all his own players. Gottfried seems to be wearing out his welcome at his alma mater, where he has coached since 1998. All three coaches have had significant personnel losses this year, Bama and LSU’s revolving around injuries, Georgia’s involving suspensions.

SEC Excitement: As teams sometimes do with a new coach, LSU gave a great effort in their 47-45 loss to Tennessee. South Carolina appeared to score the game winning basket with 6 seconds left but elected not to defend Jermaine Beal, whose drive and floater with 0.6 seconds left in Vandy’s thrilling 66-65 win. It was Vanderbilt’s second straight road win in the SEC after losing their first four trips by an average of 16 points per game.

Big Upsets: Purdue was the weekend’s biggest main-board upsetter, winning at Wisconsin as a +10 choice on Saturday. A pair of 9.5-point Pac Ten dogs were close behind in Sunday action, as Washington’s home upset over UCLA and Arizona State’s surprise down the road at Arizona died as the second biggest upsets. UCLA was 1-16 from three-point land.

Centurions: Duquesne topped 100 points in both of their games this week. On Wednesday DU whipped up on St. Joe’s 102-88, then on Saturday won at LaSalle 101-84. The Dukes like to get up and down the court, but hadn’t scored 100 since hanging 129 on Howard in their season opener. Also scoring 100 points for the first time since their opener was Kansas in a 100-90 win over Baylor. The Bears cover at +16.5 was due to Baylor outscoring Kansas 36-0 from outside the arc, as the Jayhawks went 0-9 from 3-point land. 79 of Baylor’s 90 points were scored by guards.

Pointspread Surprise: Illinois State is certainly a surprising team in the Missouri Valley this year, at 9-4 in sole possession of second place to (even more surprising, make that borderline astonishing) 13-0 Drake. But the Redbirds have not matched that success with pointspread production. After covering their first three, ISU is only 2-8 their last ten in conference play.

Comments(0)

On their way to Washington State, UCLA had a rough travel day yesterday due to snows in Washington and Idaho.  It took them over ten hours from leaving campus to arriving at their hotel.  They’re young, and have all day to rest, but it isn’t ideal heading into tonight’s game.

Comments(0)

Wisconsin at Iowa: When a snowstorm strikes and ticket holders can’t make it out to the game who wants an empty arena? Not the Iowa Hawkeyes. Not a bad idea by the Iowa brass to maintain Iowa’s home court advantage by offering free admission to students and discounted admission to the public to offset heavy snows in Iowa City for the Hawkeyes hoops game against Wisconsin tonight.

Duke at North Carolina: Ty Lawson was on crutches yesterday morning and shot on the side while wearing an air cast in the afternoon. If the Tar Heel point guard can’t go or is hobbled that’s a big edge for the Blue Devils, as UNC is already thin at the point. Of course North Carolina enjoys a substantial edge inside, where Duke has no answers for Tyler Hansbrough defensively.

Vanderbilt at Georgia: Two-thirds of Georgia’s three-guard offense have missed practice time this week with the flu. The Bulldogs shot miserably down the stretch in a loss to Kentucky on Saturday, maybe those illnesses were the reason.

Kentucky at Auburn: Looks like a war of attrition, as Kentucky is sick and beat up, while Auburn isn’t all that healthy themselves.

Comments(0)

Heavy with Giants money line action, Nevada sports books decided to gamble instead of lowering the money line to even out their action, and the Giants outright victory in the Super Bowl cost them.

Las Vegas sports books not only failed to crack their hoped-for $100,000,000 handle on the Super Bowl, but actually lost over $2.5 million on the game, which attracted $92,000,000 in wagers at sports books in Nevada. Ken White suggests that had the Patriots held on for the outright win, sports books would have cleaned up on those money line bets, winning about $15,000,000 on the game.

Clearly props were a big winner for the house, as they always are. It is surprising that every sports book in town held the line on the money line. You would have thought that one group or property would have looked to offset some of their risk. I know some sharps would have been heavy on the Patriots money line had they been offered the incentive of a low price.

Comments(0)

You’ve never heard of St. Joesph’s sophomore guard Garrett Williamson, but you can’t help but admire his stat line in St. Joseph’s 77-55 whipping of Villanova (it was 75-44 before Phil Martelli began subbing liberally with 2 minutes left).

Williamson, a defensive stopper off the bench, played 29 minutes. He not only helped to hold Villanova sharpshooter Scotty Reynolds to 12 points on 3 for 12 shooting, but he did plenty of “glue” stuff as well, finishing with 4 rebounds, 5 assists, 4 blocks, and 2 steals.

An impressive performance for sure, but most amazingly, Williamson did all of this without taking a shot in the game. That’s right, 0 for 0 from the field. Martelli has a veteran team with good chemistry, and having guys as selfless as Garrett Williamson goes a long way to creating a dangerous team that is 11-1 in their last 12 games while roaring to a potential NCAA tourney berth.

That success is translating for bettors as well, as the Hawks are rewarding their backers with a 12-6 pointspread mark on the season. Though their Wednesday night affair off a big win on short rest at Duquesne is hardly an optimal scheduling situation, SJU has the makeup of a team that should be a hard-knocking competitor down the stretch.

Comments(0)

A lot of college basketball handicapping is the management of information. Obviously your initial work is going to give you a ton of opinions on a Saturday, and it is then up to you to determine which games are worthy of a play. I didn’t play the Purdue-Illinois game, nor the Cleveland State-Loyola of Chicago game today based information that I uncovered in the latter stages of my handicapping. Let’s take a look.

I liked Cleveland State to bounce back from their three-game losing streak at Loyola-Chicago today. The Ramblers are simply not a good team, and a buzzer beating win over Youngstown State Thursday night did nothing to change my mind about that, while Cleveland State has gone from first place in the Horizon League to being in desperate need of a win in a week and a half.

But deep down in this morning’s Joe Maxse Cleveland Plain Dealer story on the Vikings we see that point guard Cedric Johnson suffered an ankle injury on Thursday night, was limping on Friday, and is a game time decision. The article doesn’t mention it, but Johnson is Cleveland State’s leading scorer as well as their point guard. He is clearly their offensive engine. His uncertain status made this game a pass for me. If Johnson is out, or plays ineffectively due to his ankle, we’ll keep this in mind when we analyze the results of this contest.

After going against Purdue with Iowa on Wednesday night, when I did my preliminary stat work on Friday for the Saturday card I was initially attracted to the same Purdue team over Illinois. Getting a handful of points with a team that knows how to close out games vs. a lesser team that lets contests slip away down the stretch was attractive. But the statistical advantages of Purdue became less attractive when I looked at the schedules that the teams have played.

Purdue is 7-1 in Big 10 play, but 5 of those games have been at home. They have played well on the road but two of the three road games have been to weak teams that were playing poorly at the time, and those wins at Iowa (playing much more poorly a couple of weeks ago) and Penn State (who had just lost their best player to injury) should be viewed skeptically. So the Boilermakers conference wins have all been either at home or on the road against highly flawed teams.

Illinois, on the other hand, has played 5 of their last 7 games on the road, with the home team emerging victorious in each of those contests. Both of those home games have been blowout wins over Penn State (by 18) and Northwestern (by 33). Obviously Purdue is a better team than those two, but Illinois is clearly performing better at home than they are on the road, and are saddled with a road-heavy schedule in their current statistics.

Five points with the better team in what projects to be a low scoring game (total of 121) makes sense, and Purdue is still the side I’d look at if forced to play this game. But with so many games on a college Saturday I’m frequently looking for reasons to avoid games, and when I saw how the schedules have likely influenced the statistics of these teams, I found my reasons to stay off of it.

I’m not hurting for action on Saturday, as there were a number of games that had my initial opinion validated by further research. Hopefully I’ll have a winning day. And if you’re playing today I hope you do as well. If you’re interested in our handicapping services for pro and college basketball give me a call at 1-770-649-1078.

Comments(0)

In the last 17 years in Las Vegas, the only losing Super Bowl for the books was the 49ers blowout over the Chargers following the 1994 season. Matt Youmans of the Las Vegas Review-Journal offers the Nevada wagering totals on the Super Bowl since the state began tracking sports wagering handle. The preponderance of proposition wagering seems to make it unlikely that the books would lose another Super Bowl. It is worth noting that the three largest hold percentages have occurred in the last four years, showing how healthy the prop betting boom is for the house.

Update: Now after the game, the bookies are howling, claiming substantial losses. While Giants and under, as well as Giants outright, was surely a good result for a lot of small players, the big players were largely on the Patriots, with many professional bettors finding the Pats money line particularly attractive.

It will be interesting to see the results released by the State of Nevada on the sports books Super Bowl balance sheets. Is it the second losing year in the past 18? I predict a small winner for the books, with the proposition wagers offsetting side/total losses.

Comments(0)