Here’s a look at a 5 factors to think about as you take it to the sportsbooks on Wednesday night.

1. Off of their celebrated “Rodeo Road Trip”, San Antonio hosts Portland tonight and it is a unique situation for the Spurs.  They’re playing their second consecutive home game.  The last time they played a game without a flight since the previous outing was 15 games ago. Of course they’re unrested, having whipped up on the reeling Mavs last night.

2. The Blazers also played last night.  Portland just kept fighting back from a 18-point first half deficit in Houston, notching 10-0 and 12-0 runs in the second half.  All that effort set up a tough defeat for under players, as 12 points in the last 20 seconds put the game over the total by a bucket.

3. Guard-oriented Marquette, at 23-4, hosts the frontcourt forces of 25-2 Connecticut in tonight’s premier college contest.  Despite their gaudy straight-up marks, the power of the pointspread is shown by the fact that neither the Eagles (11-10) nor the Huskies (12-11) has a profitable mark against the number for those playing at -110.

4. Kentucky seeks revenge tonight against a South Carolina team that beat them as 8.5 to 9-point dogs in Lexington on January 31. It’s easy to criticize teams for playing cakey preseason schedules.  And South Carolina played a bunch of dregs, leaving the state before January only to take on mighty Princeton in December, with the Ivy Leaguers being their only main board opposition before a December 30th game with Clemson. But former Western Kentucky mentor Darrin Horn wanted to ease into his system in his first year in Columbia and it’s paying off for the Gamecocks, who are making a real tourney push.

5. As soft as Notre Dame’s defense is, should they really be laying 14 points to Rutgers? Maybe, as the Scarlet Knights shot 52.1% (25-48) from the field and 85.7% (12-14) from the line in a double-digit loss at Villanova last week. It’s tough to shoot that well and never be within single digits in the last 6 minutes of the game.  RU then suffered an 18-point home loss to West Virginia over the weekend.   That being said, Rutgers covered the big number against ‘nova, and have covered 5 of their last 7. Big East foes are struggling to maintain interest in a team whose only conference win is against even more dreadful Depaul.

Good luck in your sportsbook battles tonight.

If you know the answer to the following questions, you’re in good shape for your attack on Vegas and offshore sportsbooks on Sunday.

1. Will Toronto’s Early Attack Work?  The Raptors aren’t any good, but they are often effective in these early Sunday home games by going right to the attack against opponents who still rubbing the sleep from their eyes.  Of course that style of play would be playing right into the Knicks’ hands.  Will the Raptors alter their usual Sunday strategy?  Totals players want to know.

2. Can the Suns Control Pace Against the Celtics?  With new head coach Alvin Gentry committed to running and spreading the floor to open up the middle, the Suns are 3-0 with the wins being by a combined 422-337.  Of course, those wins were against the Clippers (twice) and Thunder, a pair of teams that make anyone’s list of bottom 5 defenses.  Boston will be different, but Boston is without Kevin Garnett, and they are prone to playing faster games when KG-less.

3. Can Syracuse Step Up? Syracuse is 1-6 both straight up and against the spread against Big East teams that entered the weekend with a winning record. Boeheim’s bunch appears to be in a good spot here, with over a week off and in a solid revenge spot on their home court.  This dinged up Syracuse used the time off to do some healing, and the return to health of Arinze Onuaku is particularly important.  Syracuse’s only win and cover against a winning Big East team was in a similarly good spot at home against West Virginia.  Can they take advantage of this “rest & revenge” situation to gain a second quality conference win?

4. How Ugly Will the Big Ten Be Today?  After Purdue won but failed to cover their home game against Indiana Saturday, there have been 28 Big Ten conference games in February.  26 times a team has failed to reach 60 points.  10 of those low scorers stayed below 50. Yikes.  Be prepared for an unattractive trio of games in that loop today.

5. Who wins the battle of Arizona?   A lot of people saw ascendant Arizona State taking over the Grand Canyon State when the Sun Devils beat the Wildcats 53-47 in a Big 10-type game that saw both teams shoot below 30% from the field.  But ‘zona has won 7 straight since then.  ASU has won 4 straight themselves.  Those streaks combine for 10-1 against the spread, as Arizona’s 3-point win laying 4 at Oregon State is the lone non-cover by these two hot teams as of late.

Good luck on Sunday.

The NBA returns on Tuesday night, and that leads off our 5 observations of interest to basketball bettors.

1. What’s the smart bet in the NBA off the All Star break?  Do you attack the offshore sportsbooks and Vegas boys with favorites or dogs?  The answer has varied the past couple of years.  Last season on the first night back, favorites went 3-4-2, and it is worth noting that all 4 dogs that covered not only won outright but covered by 15 points or more.  But you wouldn’t have expected any of it, considering that on the first day back after 2007’s All Star game favorites went 6-3 against the pointspread, and only won covering dog won outright.  Nothing meaningful to be found in this short sample size.

2. Totals had a similar split.  Last season’s 6-3 to the over wouldn’t have been expected considering that overs only went 4-5 the previous year.  I’ll likely do some more work on this Tuesday morning, exploring another year or two of data to see if there’s more of a pattern than there appears to be,  but it doesn’t look like there’s much there.  Better teams aren’t necessarily going to come out with more enthusiasm than worse teams.  Nor are the defenses ahead of the offense or vice versa. Afraid we all have to actually do our work for the Tuesday night card.

3. One thought that has always made sense in theory is “All Star Momentum Interruption”.  That is, the hot teams have the misfortune of having their momentum derailed by the All Star break, while the 4 to 5 day break is the pause that refreshes a team on a bad run.  There won’t be much to test that theory this season, as there simply aren’t many teams that are on a lengthy winning or losing streak for us to look to turn around.  The Sixers have prevailed in 4 straight games, the Warriors have a 3-game winning streak, and nobody else has won more than 2 in a row.  The 4 teams on losing streaks of more than 2 games are the Knicks (6 games while banged up on a lengthy western trip), the Kings (5 straight losses, to be expected considering they’re playing .204 basketball), Timberwolves (dropping 4 in a row, losing the invaluable Al Jefferson for the season in the process), and aging, fading Pistons (3 consecutive defeats heading into the break).

4. The college game of the night takes place in West Lafayette, Indiana, as the two best teams in the Big 10 match up.  Michigan State has withstood the loss of Raymar Morgan better than Purdue has persevered without Robbie Hummel.  It looks like mono victim Morgan will play, though not start, for the Spartans. Hummel’s weekend return for Purdue at Iowa resulted in only 1 for 7 shooting but despite his gimpy back he offered a lift with his defense and overall presence. This is only the second time all season that Purdue has been favored by less than 6 at home.  In December 2-point home favorite Purdue was humiliated by Duke 76-60.

5. Bettors who held USC +7.5 tickets on Sunday night (present company included) looked to be in pretty good shape in the final minute when Southern Cal’s Daniel Hackett scored and was fouled going to the hoop, as the “and 1″ free throw could have made it a 3-point game.  Alas, two officials saw it different ways and though the play was clearly a block, the erroneous charge call prevailed.  Trojan coach Tim Floyd exploded, storming the court and earning a double technical foul and ejection.  The free throws put the game out of reach, earning Floyd the well-deserved disdain of both Trojan bettors and the Los Angeles Times‘ Adam Rose. 

The Trojan loss was no fun, but we still enjoyed a 60% week against the pointspread for our private clients.  Our NBA is 59.3% against the pointspread on the season, and has won 5 of the previous 6 seasons.  Our college is 57% over nearly 500 plays since the start of the 2006-2007 season when we rejiggered our methods to go much heavier on the stats.   All these results are our actual documented performance as tallied by The Sports Monitor.   We’re entering our highest confidence time of the year and with our “Beyond the Tourneys” special package you can get all our college and NBA plays through the college tournaments and the end of the NBA regular season (we don’t do the NBA playoffs) for less than $8 per day.  Call me at 1-770-649-1078 for rates and details.

Good luck on Tuesday, and be careful.

Here’s a handful of tidbits to kick start your Saturday college hoops analysis, including the contrarian viewpoint to the “Mountain West is gloriously underrated” stampede.

1. In Thursday’s Starting 5 it was pointed out that Oregon State, though getting a ton of “Obama’s brother-in-law is the coach!!!” publicity, and being truly improved, was not covering pointspreads.  It happened again in rather bitter style for OSU backers that very night. Easterners who went to bed with the Beavers down only 36-35 at halftime with Oregon State +16.5  tickets in their pockets (actually those tickets would be resting offshore in their internet wagering accounts wouldn’t they?) must have been horrified to awaken to a 79-60 Washington victory.

2. That Oregon State/UW game was a good example of when a first-half wager may make sense.  We’re at a time of the year when big dogs who aren’t taken seriously by superior opponents can get off to a quick start against the sleepy foes.  But then the favorite awakens after a halftime tongue-lashing from their disgusted coaches. Eventually, the superior talent and depth wears down the outclassed opponent.   Don’t be surprised if your big dogs in good spots perform better in the first half than they do in the full game from here on out.

3. There’s a ton of media love for the Mountain West Conference, both regionally and nationally, as well as nationally (ESPN subscription required) and regionally.   While Utah, San Diego State, BYU, New Mexico, and UNLV are all nice teams, and all have a quality non-conference wins, there are a couple of things that the media isn’t really noticing in their rush to annoint these clubs as NCAA quality.  The bottom four teams in the league are lousy, as TCU, Wyoming, Colorado State, and Air Force are a combined 2-22 against the aforementioned top 5 teams.   And those top 5 aren’t getting quality road wins, as the road team is 1-10 when these teams face one another.   So the top teams are beating all the bad teams, but not registering quality road wins?  Is that really all that noteworthy?

4. The jury was out on Kansas State coach Bill Martin this season.  The Wildcats had a lot of success in his rookie year after Bob Huggins left, but with the departures of Michael Beasley and the underrated Bill Walker, how would a young KSU team perform this season? The answer early was “not all that good”, as the Wildcats started 0-4 in the Big 12.  But there’s a new set of facts to deal with, as KSU has since peeled off 6 wins in a row, covering the spread in their last 5.   As is usually the case, this turnaround took place with defense.  4 of their first 5 opponents shot 50% or better, but in their last 5 games KSU has held their opponents to 43% or less.    During their resurgence, KSU has held A&M, Iowa State and Missouri below 40% from the field.  We’ll see how improved they really are on Saturday when Kansas comes calling for an in-state hatefest.

5. No NBA due to the break, but not counting the added games, there are 80 games on the board for Saturday.  So we better all get cracking.

Good luck today.  And be careful.   We’ll be back on Monday with your next “Starting 5″.

Here are 5 things to know as you prepare for Thursday night’s pointspread battles against the offshore sportsbooks, as well as the Las Vegans and the locals.  And it’s a Thursday night with loads of intrigue in the college ranks, as well as the final three NBA matchups before the break.

1. The players welcome the time off, but Don Nelson (who is a big, career-ruining meanie according to Al Harrington), can’t like the timing of the All Star break, as his Golden State Warriors head into tonight’s contest with Portland winners of 3 of 4 and outperforming pointspread expectations recently, with a 11-5-2 spread mark in their last 18 games.  After 20 straight games in which an opponent hadn’t eclipsed 50% shooting, the Warriors allowed over 54% shooting to the Knicks Tuesday night, but it didn’t matter, as New York’s defense was even worse in a 144-127 Warrior win.

2. Some pretty good local rivalries tonight, with St. Joe’s taking on Temple in am A-10 (and Big 5) battle that’s always meaningful to Cheesesteakers, while Illinois travels to Evanston to take on upstate Big 10 rival Northwestern, winners of 5 of their last 7.  The Wildcats are willing to grind it out and they may find a willing pace partner in an Illini (the NCAA’s PC police still allows them to be called the Illini, right?) team has gone under in 8 of their last 9 games.  This is only the second meeting between these two in the last 725 days, as the Big 10 has done a poorer job maintaining hoops rivalries than some other conferences, seeing them get watered down with once-a-year play.

3. Gonzaga’s trip to Moraga, Califoria seemed like a big deal a couple of weeks ago, but the air has been let out of St. Mary’s balloon with the injury to Aussie point guard Patty Mills in the first go-around between these two teams.  Mills has proven to be as meaningful to his team as anyone in the country.  St. Mary’s eked out a 2-point cover in beating a bad San Francisco team by 19 as a 17-point favorite.  But that Gaels win was sandwiched around outright losses when favored against Portland and Santa Clara in which Mills-free SMC missed the pointspread by a combined 46 points.

4. UCLA has won 4 straight, all at Pauley Pavilion, covering all 4 contests by a combined 51 points.  Alfred Aboya’s emergence as a force at the center position is a big reason for UCLA’s step up, as he’s been snuffing out opposing big men defensively while averaging over 14 points and nearly 8 rebounds during the winning streak.   UCLA heads to Tempe seeking revenge against a Sun Devil team that held the Bruins scoreless in the last 8:12 of regulation in a 61-58 OT upset in Westwood last month.

5. Craig Robinson has improved Oregon State, and the storyline (he’s Barack Obama’s brother-in-law!!!!!!) is irresistible.  But projecting the Beavers improvement has not necessarily been profitable for bettors, as OSU is only 8-9 against the pointspread (5-6 to the number in Pac Ten play).  Vegas and offshore sportsbooks have adjusted to the improved play in Corvallis.  But betting on negative effects of Robinson’s departure from Brown has been a moneymaker, as the Bears are a pitiful 3-9 against the pointspread this season.

We’ll be handicapping for our private clients on Friday, but there isn’t nearly enough action to support a “Starting 5″.  We’ll be back with you for Saturday’s card.  On Friday look for some sports betting industry notes  at RealWorldSports.com.  Good luck and be careful.

5 starting points for your Wednesday basketball.

1. Duke opened a 1.5-point home dog to North Carolina.  How often are the Blue Devils an underdog at Cameron?  Only twice in the last decade, and both times to UNC.  Two years ago, the Heels beat Duke by 6 as a 4-point road favorite.  Back in 2005, Duke won 71-70 as a 1.5 point dog, which is the last time they beat UNC on this court.  And when we say that the Blue Devils have only been a home dog twice in the last decade, that’s as far back as we looked.  So it might be longer.

2. The most interesting individual piece of data discovered in researching this rivalry was the reminder of how dreadful UNC was in 2001-02, the second of the 3-year Matt Doherty era (or is it “Matt Doherty error”?).  Duke was a 28-point favorite over the Tar Heels in the regular season finale, and offshore sportsbooks had the Dookies at -26 and higher in the opening round of the ACC tournament.  Duke won without covering in both instances.  Carolina finished that season 8-20, while Duke was favored in every game but one (+1.5 in a road loss at eventual national champion Maryland).  The Blue Devils season came to a surprising halt when they  were upset as a double-digit favorite by Indiana in the NCAA tournament.  That was the spring that new IU coach Mike Davis looked like a budding genius.  While lacking in pointspread data, you may enjoy blowing a few minutes of your day on this recap of this rivalry between Duke and North Carolina.  ACC rivals Boston College and Florida State do not have a Wikipedia entry covering their history against one another.

3. How does double-digit underdog Syracuse come out tonight at #1 UConn?  The Orangemen have lost 4 straight road games, and in individual halves in those 4 games have allowed opponents to score 44, 47, 49, 50, 53, and 56 points.   Eric Devendorf turned the ball over 22 times in the 4 losses, with only 8 assists.  This veteran team offers little defensive resistance. Jim Boeheim, whose teams are always defensively sound when they make a tourney run, has to be tearing out what little hair he has left.

4. Robbie Hummel needs to get healthy for Purdue.  The Boilermakers are 0-3 without him, though they should be able to handle Penn State tonight.  If Hummel, PU’s primary scoring threat, gets healthy, look out for the Boilermakers. Matt Painter’s defense is holding opponents to less than 39% from the field.  That’s less than 39% of their 2-point attempts. Wow.

5.  The LA Clippers head home tonight to host a Knicks team on a back-to-back. Heading to Memphis last Friday night the Clippers had lost 7 straight, failing to cover every one of those games.  They had shot below 50% from the field in 48 of their 49 games.  Yet the Clippers somehow managed to sink 59% of their shots at lousy Memphis and the next night hit 57% of their attempts in Atlanta (Mike Bibby a late scratch) in winning those games by a combined 45 points.   No surprise that LA fell to earth in a 94-73 loss Monday night in Charlotte.  The Clippers 2-game 95-164 barrage from the field in Memphis and Atlanta is the very definition of the word “outlier”.

Hope Wednesday night treats you well.  Good luck and be careful.

We’ll try to be as close to daily as possible with our new “Starting Five” feature, designed to offer a quick burst of information to those interesting in basketball wagering, whether the activity is online sports wagering, action with Vegas books, or through friendly neighborhood sorts.  Here are five notes to start your look at Tuesday night’s basketball card.

1. A thought that a “vacation lookahead” may lead to a lack of defensive intensity and high scoring NBA results had mixed results when researched, and happily, the work wasn’t done until this year.  Two years ago Monday through Thursday prior to the All Star Break saw totals go 16-8 to the over.   That pattern didn’t repeat last season, with a 12-16 mark favoring the under.  Games that weren’t supposed to be competitive, lined over 7, favored the over with an 11-7 mark.  Games lined 7 and under saw an even split between overs and unders at 17-17.

2. Last night’s quartet of NBA affairs went saw just a single over, with the 3 unders staying below the number by 1, 20, and 30.  The Bucks/Rockets game soared over by 40.

3. Michigan State travels to Michigan tonight and opened as a 4-point road favorite.  MSU is playing their 5th game in 13 days, prevailing in 4 of the 5 with the winning margins being 11, 15, 28, and 29. Only 6 points in that 5-game span were scored by Raymar Morgan, likely to be out again tonight due to illness. Michigan battled UConn tough on Saturday, leading for long stretches and covering 16.5-points easily in a 69-61 loss.  UM has lost 6 of 8 but the encouraging UConn loss and a preceding 20-point win over Penn State may indicate a return to form for the Wolverines.

4. Revenge-minded UNLV hosts TCU tonight. Former Kent State coach Jim Christian had been getting a lot of positive press for TCU’s turnaround, as the Horned Frogs, who hadn’t had a winning season since 2004-2005, got off to a 13-5 start in Christian’s initial campaign.  But TCU has hit the skids, losing 4 in a row and failing to cover the spread in their last 5.   After allowing opponents to shoot better than 48% only 4 times in their first 19 games, the last 4 TCU opponents have shot in excess of that number, including 59%+ by Utah and 57%+ by New Mexico. Christian’s Kent State team won 11 of 12 before losing to UNLV in the NCAA’s last season (so this is the third time Christian and Lon Kruger are facing off in less than 11 months), but this TCU bunch looks like a tired team.

5. Speaking of Kent State, the Golden Flashes are in 6th and last place in the MAC East, yet opened a 10-point favorite at Northern Illinois, the 4th place team in the MAC West.  2nd place MAC East entrant Miami is opened minus-8 over Central Michigan, the 3rd place team in the Western Division.  But these fat lines don’t necessarily indicate home dog value, as the standings show that every team in the MAC East has a winning record while every team in the MAC West has a losing mark on the campaign.

Hope the “Starting 5″ is tipping off a fine Tuesday for you.  Good luck in your basketball betting and everything you do today.

Pretty big game in the NBA tonight, as the Celtics travel to Cleveland in a potential Eastern Conference Finals preview.  The Celtics attribute their recent 2-6 slide to poor defense, but their offense has been no great shakes, either, as they’ve scored fewer than 90 points in 5 of those games.  Slumping Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo had a only a single assist in the first 3 quarters in Wednesday’s home upset loss to Houston.  Rondo has been sloppy, with recent games in which he committed 7 and 9 turnovers.   He’s been doing a poor job both distributing and scoring during this tough stretch.

Cleveland’s Zydrunas Ilgauskas is more involved in his team’s offensive flow than most big men, and his ankle injury isn’t good news for a Cleveland team that can expect peak defensive intensity from Boston.  These are the #1 and #2 teams in the league in defensive efficiency, and with reason to think that their offenses will not be at a peak, as well as with playoff-level intensity, the under may be the way to go in Cleveland tonight.

We’ve had a lot of questions about our college basketball as we ease our way into hoops.  As background, I completely changed my college hoops methodology in 2006 and the results have been noteworthy. The past two years we’ve won both years in both the regular season and March Madness.  The overall winning percentage for my Strategic Sports Publishing college hoops selections is in excess of 58% against the spread over more than 375 plays in college baskets over those two years.  That’s our record as documented by the Sports Monitor of Oklahoma City. After juice that’s nearly 50 units of profit (all plays are a single unit, no “5 star”, “10 star” variable unit BS).  If you’re interested in subscribing to my basketball service call my office at 1-770-649-1078.

The college success somewhat obscures the fact that we’ve also won 5 of the 6 years that I personally have been doing the NBA (I had an “NBA guy” doing it for a couple of years before that), and I wanted to share an NBA strategy that has worked out for us in the past, and over the past couple of nights as well.

The style of play of NBA teams can change pretty rapidly as their personnel changes.  Let’s look at a couple of examples.

KG Suspended: On Tuesday night the Celtics were playing without Kevin Garnett, who is their heart and soul defensively.  We expected the defense to suffer and the Celts offense to be a little smaller and play a little quicker.  And since Boston was playing the Knicks, the fastest paced team in the league, it looked like the scoring would be higher than would be the case with Garnett in the lineup.  The line had moved to accomodate Garnett’s one-game suspension, but the total did not, and over 204 cashed in the 111-101 Celtics victory.

Billups In, Parker/Ginobili Out:   With Chauncey Billups arriving recently in a trade for Allen Iverson, Denver is being led in a more disciplined and deliberative manner, leading to slower play.   Meanwhile, the Spurs had slowed things down considerably due to the absence of Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, and are playing at a high level of defensive intensity in an effort to make up for the resulting decline in guard play. With the new-look Nuggets taking on a Spurs team playing at a snail’s pace (among the three slowest teams in the league), the total was substantially lower than the 200 and change that these teams were lined at last year.  But we didn’t think the adjustment was enough (some scheduling factors favored offensive inefficiency).  Under 180.5 came through for us in a 91-81 Denver win.

Information Interpretation: Personnel changes can influence these NBA teams pretty quickly, and it can be hard for the linemaker to keep up.  Paying attention to the playing style and injury/suspension situations in the NBA can pay off if you have the time to keep up with it and apply it to matchups and other handicapping factors.

Doesn’t Always Work:  It so happens that these games won, but even if they had lost they would have been pretty good examples of melding injuries and personnel situations with style of play analysis.  Fortunately, we did happen to win both of them.  Obviously we’ll lose plenty of games this season, but our record over the years in basketball is pretty good.  If you’d like to benefit from our hard work call me at 1-770-649-1078 for more information on how a subscription to our daily basketball selection program works.

I bet Portland over their season wins total.  Choices range from over 44.5 laying -133 to over 45.5 at even money.  It is my lone NBA season total wins play.  The Blazers open their season tonight at 10:35 EDT.

There may be other good ones out there, but I’ve been fully absorbed in football and didn’t do a complete analysis of every team.  A couple of other plays I was interested in had schedule dynamics that conflicted with my “on-court” opinion of their prospects.

The Blazers are a talented young team that played well in spurts last season.  They exhibited good chemistry and solid rapport.  Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge (I have to admit that LaMarcus was not on the list of names that my wife and I considered for any of our children) are tremendous building blocks and now they’re joined by Spanish Olympic sensation Rudy Fernandez and, of course Greg Oden.  Their youth and inexperience will hurt them at times, but the young legs and depth will help at others.  And the talent is undeniable.

Taking a look at their schedule, clearly Portland won’t start out on fire, as they play 16 of their first 24 on the road.  But big picture, the schedule is favorable. The Blazers play 16 back-to-backs, while 27 times they’ll be playing unrested opponents.  This is a solid advantage, especially for a deep, young team.  The fact that there is no longer a team in Seattle means that a lot of those unrested opponents will not just be on short hops, but facing arduous travel, and/or playing the night after playing in altitude in SLC or Denver.

If you want more information on Portland, a good collection of Blazers articles is hosted here.

Good luck if you decide to join me in playing the Blazers over on their season wins.