College Basketball Betting: Key Betting Tips
By Loot, College basketball Handicapper, Lootmeister.com
Here are some other tips that can enhance your college hoops wagering experience. We need all the ammo we can get. Different elements of insight are like different weapons we can employ in the battle that is college basketball wagering.
Coaching Changes: Sometimes a team is so tore-up that a coach is let go in midseason. You don't see it very often. The situation has to be very dire. And part of that is diminishing public appeal on that team. They are so bad that most bettors are steering clear. Then they axe the coach and that tends to result in even more negativity surrounding that team.
A lot of times, however, a team like that can see a sudden improvement on the heels of letting a coach go midseason. The interim guy, usually an assistant, pumps a little wind into the sagging sails of that team and for a while--they catch a little spark. The new look just makes them play a little better. Maybe the exiting coach wasn't very well-liked. Now that he's gone, the good feelings can carry that team to cover more spreads than what was previously the case. It's not they become a good team overnight, but they don't have to to cover spreads. The public is already soured on them so thoroughly that even a slight improvement of form can get them to cover some of these inflated spreads.
Players Coming Back: Our ears generally perk up when an important player is returning to the line-up. If it was from a suspension, he may be more ready to start on the fast-track than a guy who blew out his knee. But we need to refrain from jumping to conclusions. A lot of people will put too much stock in a returning guy, or at least at the beginning.
An injured player might be eased back into action and it could take some time before he really has an impact. You could easily see that his replacement was a big surprise, playing almost as well and sometimes better than the sidelined star. This isn't to imply that teams seldom improve when they get their top dog back in the lineup. Of course they do. It's just that sometimes, its impact is overrated or expected to manifest too soon.
Neutral Site Games: With all the talk about the importance of the home/away dynamic, you'd think people would talk more about the importance of neutral site games, of which there are many. Look to see if the conditions of the neutral site are conducive for one team more than the other. Geography is a major concern. Some neutral site games are virtually home games for a nearby school that has a robust fan base.
The conditions of the neutral site arena are also factors. Some teams are more adept at playing in gigantic arenas whereas other schools generally play in tiny venues. The crowd size can be a factor. A team that plays home games in front of 1500 people might be flummoxed by suddenly being in front of 13000 fans.
Look for Story-Lines: We sometimes look at games as if they exist in a vacuum. But there are definite emotional tie-ins that can tilt the spread in one direction or the other. For example, some teams have an axe to grind with other teams. It can be for a variety of reasons. A cheap foul could have taken out their star player in previous game. A loss could have cost them a tournament berth. Maybe they had the score run up on them earlier in the campaign.
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The vanquished team in these situations will have a little something extra to play for the next time the teams play. They may not be able to do much about it. The pieces need to be in place. That team needs to have the same players or it might not matter much by the time the next season rolls around.
There will be times where you can identify a possible revenge angle. Our handicapping still needs to hold true. We don't use this as our singular guiding light. But in a nip-and-tuck kind of game, revenge can be enough to tip the scale in our favor. A team with an axe to grind is likely to play slightly better than against a team where there are no particular feelings one way or the other.
