Here are a handful of items of interest to those interested in betting the college and NBA basketball card on Thursday night. 

1. If you’re looking for UCLA to bounce back from their embarrassing 97-68 blowout loss at Washington last weekend, you’ll want to be on top of the Bruins’ injury situation for their game against Oregon State tonight.  The frontcourt is thin for Ben Howland’s troops as Reeves Nelson (11 points, 5.8 rebounds per game) is out for the weekend after eye surgery and Brendan Lane’s status is up in the air after he injured his ankle in practice this week.  Lane only averages 2.2 points per game, but had a season high 11 in the loss up in Seattle.  In Nelson’s absence his status is more important than it would be otherwise.  The Bruins are favored by 5 on their home floor tonight.

2. Another Pac Ten frontcourt with injury issues is Cal’s.  The Golden Bears have backup center Max Zhang out with a collapsed lung, Markhuri Sanders-Frison playing through some back issues and Omondi Amoke suffering with some shoulder issues.  First-place Cal is the favorite to pull down their first regular season conference title since 1960, but have a tough weekend ahead with Arizona tonight and Arizona State on Saturday.

3. Arizona State, a team benefitting from contributions throughout a deep roster,  heads to Stanford tonight.  The Sun Devils are a 2.5-point favorite at Vegas and online sportsbooks.  Stanford is 5-1 straight up against conference foes at home despite having only 5 scholarship players available for several of those games.

4. Wisconsin has played 6 of their last 9 games at home, but return to the conference road tonight with a trip to Bloomington, Indiana to face the Hoosiers.   Their status as 11-point favorites at Vegas and online sportsbooks seems reasonable considering Indiana has lost 8 in a row, and in failing to cover their last 5 has lost each of those games by 14 points or more.   Those close to the program insist the Hoosiers are getting better, but this already thin club is still trying to recover from not only the Kelvin Sampson era but key injury losses earlier this season.

5. Thursday’s NBA card appears to be headlined by the Cavaliers/Celtics clash, but that game loses some luster if Paul Pierce doesn’t play.  Doc Rivers suggests that it is “most likely” that Pierce doesn’t go tonight, as he is suffering from both the flu and a bad thumb.  The Celtics look like a team in decline and continue to disappoint bettors with a miserable 6-18 pointspread mark on their home court.

Yesterday we talked about how scoring was up in the NBA, which some are crediting to new, more forgiving rims.   Shooting is improved, yet games continue to careen under the total.   All 9 games were under in regulation last night, with the Lakers and Thunder going over in the overtime period.

Unders are now 36-23 (61%) on the season, despite increased scoring.  Look for lines to be adjusted downward and for overs to start hitting.

NBA teams are scoring an average of 99.96 points per game, vs. 95.17 points per game last season, which ESPN’s Marc Stein attributes to the new, more forgiving rims in use by the Association.  The rims which instituted as a safety measure, as they collapse from both the back and the front.

Shooting is up just a smidge over 1%, and three-point shooting has improved dramatically, from 33.4% to 36.3%.  

Surprisingly, NBA bettors have not been scoring with their over bets.  In fact, over the season’s first 50 games, unders actually have the advantage, with 28 games going under the marketplace projection, and only 22 games going over.   So scoring is up, yet unders are cashing at a 56% rate.

Reason for the disparity?   Teams can shoot lights out in a game, send it way over the total, yet it only counts as a single over.  For instance, in Sunday’s 133-123 Denver win over Memphis, the teams obliterated the total of 207 by 49 points.  Each team shot over 55% from the field and the Grizzlies and Nuggets combined to shoot 17-35 from outside the arc.  The 168 shots in the game is a healthy number, as well. 

So while a game like that can have quite an impact on the overall shooting percentages, it is only a single total.   We’re also looking at a small sample size, only a week of action consisting of 50 games.  In the first four nights unders cashed at a 20-11 rate, but scores have been higher from Saturday through Monday, with overs going 11-8.

The new rims and increased scoring is something to be aware of, but there clearly hasn’t been a lot of profit to be made at this juncture and the sports betting marketplace is sure to adjust quickly.   Chances are very good that by the time the last shot is made next spring, overs and unders will be very close to 50/50.

An edge might be available in early season college basketball for totals players.  Assuming the new rims are not standard in college basketball, knowing what kind of rim is being used could provide a meaningful edge for college hoops bettors.

Kobe’s Slump Leads to Storm of Unders: Interesting how a single player can determine a team’s over/under results for a period of time.  If a team’s center is out, some teams start playing more overs, as they don’t have a defensive force in the middle and might play smaller and faster offensively.  An efficient point guard’s absence can obviously lead to more unders.

Less frequent is how a single slumping player can effect results.  Kobe Bryant has been shooting miserably, keying a 1-9 under stretch for the Lakers.   Before shooting 10-18 at Minnesota on Wednesday night, Bryant had shot better than 40% in a game exactly once in his previous 8 outings.  Bryant hit only 63 of 167 shots for a miserable 37.7% from the field in that time period, leading to the surge of unders.

Pointspread Winners and Losers From Across the NBA Strata: As the season winds down, there are both good teams and poor teams that have made their backers money over the season.  The 55-19 Magic and 61-14 Cavs meet tonight, and they have both made a mint for their backers.  Discounting pushes, Orlando is an impressive 47-27 against the spread, while the Cavs are 44-31, very healthy for a team with the game’s most popular superstar.

Of the top-level teams, only Houston (36-38 to the number) and New Orleans (33-40) are below .500 to the spread, though the Lakers and Celtics are dancing around .500

A team doesn’t need to have a stout winning record to be a money maker.  The Knicks, at 29-46, are 43-31 to the number while the 34-41 Bobcats are a stout 46-29 to the pointspread.   But the pointspread is not making up for the ineptitude of a couple of bad teams.  The 17-60 Wizards are 29-45 to the spread, while the 18-57 Clippers are also burning money, with a lousy 30-45 spread mark.

Suns Total Adjustments Not Enough: When Alvin Gentry was hired to put the pace back into the Suns, it was obvious that Phoenix would be playing much higher scoring games.  As a result, the adjustments in totals are at a historic level.  In their last 5 games, the Suns have played teams they also played in November.   In their last outing against Houston, the total was 222, compared to 198.5 in November.  The total against Sacramento was 236 this week, and 202.5 back in November.  Utah has been played twice recently, with the totals 230 and 228.5, compared to 194.5 early in the campaign.  Last week’s game against Portland had a total of 221 compared to 195 for a November joust with the Blazers.

So the totals of the last 5 Suns games have totals that are higher than games against the same teams in November by a total of 152.5, or 30.5 points higher per game.  Alas, the oddsmakers’ adjustments have not been enough, the Suns are 4-1 to the over in those contests, taking them to 16-8 to the over since the hiring of Gentry.

Let’s see what we can glean from yesterday’s results that are of interest as you attack local, Vegas, and online sportsbooks on Friday.   Should you let the short sample of yesterday’s results influence your decisions on Friday?  Your call.

1. If you consider Duke to have covered their game, and Gonzaga not to have covered theirs, dogs had a 9-7 edge. Totals favored the over by somewhere in the 11-5, 10-5-1, 10-6 range.  Your mileage may vary.

2. Favorites of 20 or more (Duke, North Carolina, Connecticut, Memphis) were 3-1 against the pointspread and 3-1 to the over.  Both results fly in the face of what usually happens in games with huge favorites in the first round.

3. If you had the Chattanooga/Connecticut game under the total, avert your eyes.   Jim Calhoun’s absence due to illness may have been the difference between the game staying under, or going over late, which is what happened. UConn scored on their last 10 possessions.  According to the play-by-play (admittedly always a little dicey) UConn shot the ball in 10 seconds or less on 7 of those 10 possessions.  If Calhoun is glowering on the sidelines don’t you think the Huskies, up 50 in the closing minutes, are running clock and conserving energy for Saturday instead running, gunning, and padding stats?  This isn’t a complaint, by the way, as I wasn’t involved in that total.  I did have the Morgan State/Oklahoma game under, and found Todd Bozeman’s strategy of fouling in the closing seconds down 26 rather unique.  Of course, I really shouldn’t complain, as I thought long and hard about playing Thursday night’s Blazers/Cavaliers game under before passing. That one went over by a bucket in overtime.

4. Best performance by a conference was the Big 12 going 3-0 straight up and against the spread, with all 3 pointspread covers by (Texas, Oklahoma, and Texas A&M) by double digits. Other noteable performances saw the ACC go 3-1 to the pointspread (considering Duke a cover), while the Big 10 was 1-3.

5. The whole “spend the first weekend of the tournament hanging out with hundreds of sweaty guys we don’t know in Vegas” thing has always been lost on me.  At home I control the TV, the beer is on demand, and I seem to find ways to get bets down.  But for guys who consider online sportsbooks to have been “made illegal”, haven’t had the proper amount of male bonding in their lifetime, or simply are looking for an excuse to ditch the office and family, Vegas is still a popular destination.  But according to a couple of the sweaty bonders who were in touch on Thursday, the crowds are, as expected, a little thinner out there this year.

Good luck to you on Friday, and be careful.

The NCAA tournament has morphed into a national sports betting holiday.  So why is conference tournament week a superior wagering opportunity?

1. The NCAA tournament has 64 games, including the play-in, over a 3-week span.  This week there are 127 games from Tuesday through Sunday involving teams that are in the main college betting rotation used by Vegas and offshore sportsbooks.  That vast selection, combined with the unique nature of daily tournament basketball play, makes the conference tourneys a superior wagering opportunity.  As a result, along with our clients we have a very good track record in the conference tourneys.

2. Every game is a rematch, and some teams have already played twice.  While sometimes teams change drastically over the course of a season (if Georgetown gets hot and plays UConn you can all but throw early January Hoya win up in Storrs out the window), in many instances understanding what happened in the previous games is meaningful.  What happened in those games?  If a team has shown an edge previously is it due to legitimate matchup advantages, or did they hit a bunch of contested 3’s and get favorable officiating against a banged up opponent?  You need to know how the previous meetings played out.

3. After the first round, every game has at least 1 team, and it’s usually both teams, playing without rest.  That makes fatigue and energy levels critically important.  So nagging injuries, player rotation,  and depth are enormously important.  If you don’t study every box score and game story carefully this week, and understand how those box scores relate to the teams usual substitution patterns, you’re shortchanging yourself.

4. If a team has already (cliche alert) punched their ticket to “The Big Dance”,  how important is this game to them? Certain conference tournaments are enormously important to the teams involved, and bragging rights are particularly on the line in the Big East and the ACC.   But in other conferences (Pac Ten, anyone?) there’s not nearly the fervor for a conference tourney title.  Would they like to win? Sure.  But would a coach really mind not having to put his team through the wringer in order to win this week’s tourney when the one that starts next week is more important to him? After all, coaches don’t get lucrative new jobs as a result of conference tourney runs, but burst into the Sweet 16 and the big money follows.

5. Obviously to properly benefit from some fine opportunities this week there has to be some serious work involved.   We’ve been doing that work all year long and will be ingesting tons of box scores and game stories this week in an effort to get an edge.  Our documented success over the years in the conference tournaments and the NCAA’s proves that the hard work over the course of a long season pays off this time of year.   If you purchase our March Madness selection package we’ll give you the rest of the NBA regular season for free.  You end up paying just a bit more than 7 bucks a day to take advantage of our hard work, experience, and proven basketball success.  Call 1-770-649-1078 for more information or to sign up.

Hopefully something here helps you out. Good luck with the conference tourneys this week.

Let’s take a look at Thursday night’s college and NBA card, where the pro games are fewer, but more interesting, than the power conference college contests.

1. As you might expect, offshore and Vegas sportsbooks do big volume on the Thursday night TNT games.  There’s usually, at most, one other game going on in the Association, and sometimes, like tonight, no other offerings.  If there are spotlight games in college, they tend to be out west, with lesser TV visibility and a time slot unfriendly to those east of the Rockies.   People love to bet TV games, so the TNT games get hit pretty hard by the public.

2. Mavs visiting New Orleans is a solid matchup.  In the late game, Portland travels to altitude without rest, and takes on a Nugget team that has a fresh superstar, as Carmelo Anthony is off his one game suspension.  It looks like all parties have put Anthony’s refusal to be subbed for in Indy behind them and there doesn’t appear to be lingering animosity between Anthony and George Karl.  Denver got off to a fast start in Detroit before wearing down late, and their offensive flow suffered without ‘Melo, as the Nuggets had only 18 assists on their 37 hoops.

3.  We’ve seen some interesting slates of games in the Pac Ten lately, but tonight is not one of them, as there isn’t a single matchup between teams that both have winning records in league play.  Conference leader Washington, criminally underrated nationally, is off before taking on cross-state rival Wazzou this weekend.  The ESPN talking heads blather on about the likes of Notre Dame, Maryland, and Texas yet rarely touch on the team with the game-and-a-half lead in the Pac 10.

4. “Arch Madness” gets going tonight with the donkey games in the the Missouri Valley Conference tournament.  The MVC, which brought little experience into the season, is down a good bit this year.  Sagarin has Creighton at #52, Pomeroy has them #50. then there’s nobody else until Illinois State at #75/#74 and Northern Iowa at #81/#86 respectively.   Nobody else is in either top 100. Back in 2007 Sagarin had 6 MVC teams in the top 74 and Pomeroy had the same 6 teams ranked 77 or higher.  In 2006 both had 6 Valley entrants inside of their top 60.   This looks like a one-big league, so if they’re going to prove anything it will be in the NIT and CBI.

5. One non-power conference that has a couple of interesting games tonight is the Atlantic 10, where a pair of heated rivalries take place.  Xavier hosts Dayton and the X men remember that the Flyers nailed them 71-58 as home underdogs.  St. Joseph’s and Temple face off in a game that is critically important in the land of cheesesteaks and soft pretzels.  Temple won the first go-around 61-59 at the Palestra.  This one is at the Licouras Center on Temple’s campus.

Enjoy the Thursday card. In our next edition we’ll isolate some well-regarded coaches whose teams are costing bettors big-time this season.

It’s the last week of the regular season in college hoops and the dog days of the NBA.  Most of these items will help you battle the sportsbooks on Wednesday, but admittedly, there is some meandering.

1.  Tuesday night appeared to be Christmas week in the Evergreen State, as Washington beat the Seattle Redhawks and Gonzaga beat the South Carolina-Upstate Spartans in contests that had the look and feel of those played in December.  The combined scores totaled 177-100 in “why are they playing?” games properly ignored by the Vegas and offshore sportsbook rotation.

2. Playing their last home game tonight, Georgia Tech is quietly having a dreadful season.  Paul Hewitt has won 7 ACC games or more in 7 of his first 8 years on The Flats, but the Jackets are 1-13 in ACC play.  Both the team and the player would be better off had the talented Jarvaris Crittendon hung around and learned to play basketball instead of averaging less than 4 points per game in his second year with the Wizards.   Much has been made of the Jackets losing some close games, which they have, but the pointspread doesn’t lie, and Tech is 7-16 to the number, including 4-10 in conference play.

3. Oklahoma at Missouri is the game of the night in college hoops, and I was looking to play the Tigers after their blowout loss to Kansas Sunday.  The Tigers were never in that one, trailing 45-19 at the half.  But a bounceback will have to happen without my money, as Vegas and offshore sportsbooks have the Tigers laying 4 points into an Oklahoma team that has only a single loss with Blake Griffin in the lineup.   Tough to buck either team in that one.

4. The NBA game of the night isn’t Memphis at the Clippers.  And it isn’t Washington at Oklahoma City.  Maybe it’s Houston at Utah.  But the Rockets are in a tough situation, playing in altitude after throttling Toronto at home last night.  That’s why Vegas and offshore sportsbooks opened Utah at -7.5 only to see bettors push it up to -8.5 and beyond.

5. The NBA betting markets are frequently ahead of the  injury reports, so the fact that the Mavericks have been bet from -1 up to -3 against the Spurs suggested the Josh Howard will be playing tonight.  Or maybe people just think that Mark Cuban’s disgust at the no-show by the Mavs in the OKC will spur them on to glory this evening.  Not that all that much glory is available in midweek games in early March in the NBA.

Good luck tonight, and be careful.

Let’s see if a look at Friday night’s card can give basketball bettors an edge over the sportsbooks.

1. Friday nights tend to be more of a handicap of true strengths and matchups in the NBA, as the short card on Thursdays means you don’t have a lot of back-to-back situations on Fridays.  So fatigue isn’t ordinarily an issue, though rested doesn’t always mean focused in the NBA, especially for non-contenders down the stretch.

2. The two teams that aren’t rested may very well match up in the Finals.  Cleveland is unrested at San Antonio after their loss to Houston.  The Lakers have more of a challenge, as they’re in Denver, a longer trip at a higher elevation.  The Lakers only loss in their last 14 games was in an identical “unrested in altitude” situation, 113-109 to the Jazz on February 11th.  But last night against Nash-less Phoenix was so easy, with only Lamar Odom playing more than 27 minutes, LA may be fresher than expected.

3. The Detroit Pistons have been a very professional outfit in recent years, but for the first time in almost a decade, basketball bettors must try to get a handle on Detroit’s effort level not due to scheduling, lookahead, or letdown situations, but simply based on the apparent lack of that aforementioned professionalism.  And some Michiganders have had their fill of Rasheed Wallace, who was ejected with his 2nd technical with the Pistons down 3 with less than 8 minutes to go in their close loss in New Orleans.

4. No line yet, as the injury list in this one reads like the Stimulus Bill, but the Kings could conceivably be favored over the scorching hot (for them) Clippers. If so, it will be the 11th time the Kings have been favored this year.  5 of those were before Thanksgiving, including laying 2 points at home to the mighty Spurs.  Of course both teams were very different when the Spurs earned a 90-88 win on November 16th.

5. The Ivy League plays on Friday and Saturday nights, and Penn hadn’t been swept at home on Friday and Saturday nights by an Ivy opponent in 41 years.  It has now happened on consecutive weekends to the Quakers at the Palestra, where they’re 2-9 straight up, 0-7 against the spread on what should be a very strong home court.  Penn opens a 3.5-point favorite against a Yale team they’ve already beaten up in New Haven.  Yale is 6-3 against the pointspread as an underdog this season.

Good luck your Friday endeavors, pointspread and otherwise.

Only a pair of NBA games and 35 main board college contests on Thursday night, but the pro games are a pair of beauties, while the top college affair won’t finish until Midnight or later for over three-quarters of us.

1. The Cavs are only favored by a point at Houston, which may seem a little short.  But nobody defends opposing superstars like Shane Battier and the Rockets are 23-6 at home.  Yao Ming is expected to be back in the lineup tonight, and he matches up with Zydrunas Ilgauskas, who is averaging 13 points and nearly 8 rebounds since returning in late January for the Cavs.

2. The Suns visit the Lakers in the late game.  Phoenix has won 4 of 5 since going uptempo, and have shot a mind-boggling 247-436 (56.6%) in those games.  But the 4 wins have been against lottery teams and of course now they’re lacking injured forward Stoudemire, while Steve Nash has a bad ankle. Nash is a game-time decision, and most of those suit up in a game of this magnitude.  But if you’re thinking of playing this one it will be worth having your ear to the ground after Thursday’s shootaround.

3. Bob Huggins return is huge news in the Queen City, with The Enquirer even picking the All-Huggins era team (first, second, and third teams).  Despite graduation rates and DUI’s, Huggins was always favored by Bearcat fans over his antagonists in the UC administration.  But despite all the hype, the real news is that both of these teams can play.  WVU and UC are lost in the Big East clutter, but the Mountaineers are one of the best defensive outfits in the country, and could’ve been elite if point guard Joe Mazzulla hadn’t been lost for the season early.  Huggins would want this badly even if it wasn’t his grand return to Cincinnati, as his Mountaineers got waxed 62-39 at home last year by UC, shooting 10-50, including 1-22 from 3-point land. Cincinnati had won and covered 7 of 9 before consecutive losses to Pitt and Louisville.

4. Memphis’ 54-game conference winning streak would be about a season shorter had UAB’s apparent game winning shot not been after the buzzer in Bartow Arena last season. Memphis returns to the scene of their monster comeback (9-1 in the last 1:23) that spurred a near-brawl between UAB fans and Memphis players. Speaking of streaks, that heartbreaker was the only home loss for UAB in their last 27 outings.  Earlier in the season UAB hung around for a half but lost by 13 in Memphis.  UAB’s a thin team, not going much more than 6 deep with their starters playing over 80% of the minutes ordinarily. UAB’s Robert Vaden deserves more pub, but can he carry his Blazers against the much deeper Tigers?

5. A quartet of teams have 4 or 5 losses in Pac 10 play, but the winner of the Arizona State/Washington game will get some separation and will be in first place all by themselves.  The Huskies walloped the Sun Devils 84-71 in Tempe earlier this season. In that one Huskies had the edge from both lines, 50%-26% from 3-point land while notching 26 points from the charity stripe.   UW opens as a 4-point favorite, and it should be a good one for those with Fox Sports Regional access who don’t mind staying up until 1AM Eastern, Midnight Central. Tough for the Pac Ten to complain about East Coast bias when over 75% of the people in the US have to stay up until the wee hours to watch.

Good luck in your personal battle with the sportsbooks on Thursday night.