Here are all the current college basketball betting articles
from Maddux Sports.
A tricky part about gambling on college conference games is the rematch. Usually in a conference two teams will place each other twice, both home and away. Sometimes this can fool the new bettor into simply looking at the last matchup between the two teams when making their decision on who to bet on. However, it is not as simple as that, but there are many factors that go into that second conference game that can make you much more successful when betting on the second conference game. ...
With the college basketball season about to start a lot of bettors are thinking about season long props - like who will win the national championship. Originally, my plan was to write an article about what to do and what not to do when it comes to making these bets. To be honest, though, there's not much that I think you should do when it comes to these bets. They have their purposes, but there are very few reasons to legitimately use them as a serious bet. I'm not suggesting that you absolutely shouldn't play these bets, but if you are going ...
Each year a few college basketball teams get a very nice gift right before Christmas. That's when the academic term ends, so it's also when players who weren't eligible in the first semester can join the team and start playing. There are usually a few intriguing, valuable players that get added. The challenge for handicappers is to determine what the impact of these midseason additions and the other lower profile ones that join their teams will actually be. Here are eight questions you can ask to help get a sense of what could happen, and wher ...
RPI - an acronym that gets thrown around a lot in the world of college basketball. Like a lot of things in sports, though, a lot of people talk about it without really understanding what it is, why it matters, the faults it has, and how it can be useful. The RPI, which stands for Ratings Percentage Index, is a mathematical calculation used in college basketball to aid in how teams are selected for the NCAA tournament, and where they are seeded once they get there. It doesn't specifically act as an official tiebreaker or have other specific pow ...
When most college basketball bettors - certainly casual ones - are looking at the games on offer on a given day looking for the most attractive they are drawn to the ones with the biggest names involved. Games between ranked teams always draw the most money, followed by those with one highly ranked team. I don't start with those games at all. I actually rarely bet them. I go to the other extreme - I like to start with the games with the worst teams playing. I love ugly games - I don't watch them, but they are great to bet on. Here are four goo ...
Have you ever watched a Duke NCAA basketball game? Or a game of the Maryland Terps? Maybe the Kansas Jayhawks? If you have attended one of these teams' arenas, you know what I'm talking about. From loud chants to throwing objects on the court, these crowds are tough to play in front if you're the away team. ...
Gonzaga is looking mortal these days, but for many years they were so much better than every team in their conference that it just wasn't fair. Before Butler made history by going all the way to the championship game in 2010 they have rolled to a perfect record in the Horizon League. Memphis' success on the national stage under John Calipari coincided with totally ridiculous dominance of Conference USA. These aren't the only cases in which one team was clearly and dramatically better than the conference they play in, but they are all very stro ...
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Mid Major Juggernauts 
One of the best things about handicapping sports is that there is always more to learn and different ways to think about things. Unless you are getting every game right you can always do better - pick more winners and win more money. there are a lot of people out there looking at sports and statistics in a lot of interesting and very powerful ways. With a little creativity and determination you can use these statistics to give you a better understanding of different sports, and to help you find a bigger edge. ...
We are far enough into the college basketball season that some real surprises have started to emerge. Every year there are a couple of teams that weren't even ranked in the preseason polls - and perhaps didn't even get votes in the poll - that vault into the rankings or even into the top ten. Any time a team so dramatically exceeds their expectations handicappers are left to determine if what we are seeing is a fluke, or if the team really has improved as significantly and rapidly as it seems. Here are five questions you can ask yourself to he ...
March is obviously all about the tournament when it comes to college basketball. Smart bettors know, though, that March is also when the coaching carousel starts to spin at full force. In most cases it's hard to get too excited about coaching changes when they happen - the team needed to make a change, and we won't see the new coach coach a game for many months. Smart bettors know, though, that right when a coaching change is made is a very important time to think about what impact it could have and how people will react. Most casual bettors w ...
The general betting public has plenty of biases - favorites and the over, for example. Oddsmakers are fully aware of those biases, and they adjust the lines accordingly to maximize their chances at profit. That means that successful bettors are also aware of those biases, and they factor in the line movement in their hunt for value. When it comes to college basketball, one of the public biases is the support of teams from major conferences when they are playing against mid-majors. The public loves bigger name programs, so they will almost alwa ...
The sports media loves to overreact to situations. It seems like it is their favorite thing to do. A team wins a couple of games in a row in impressive fashion and they have already been awarded the title. Lose a couple and they might as well fold. A player with a couple of good games is breaking out, while one who has a couple of off games should probably retire. A coach who wins is a genius, but one who loses is a total moron. ...
There are so many college basketball teams and conferences out there that we can't possibly keep track of them all. Some conferences are so obscure that the only time we hear about them each year is when the winner of the conference loses to a number one seed by 40. Those teams often play games on which a spread isn't even set by the major sports book. Every so often, though, those teams play games against higher profile teams are we have to handicap them. When an obscure team like that is playing one we know well - especially if the well know ...
When a lot of people talk about college basketball - especially outside of the handful of elite, top level programs - they talk a lot about the significance of seniors in the lineup. The theory is that seniors are more experienced, they provide better leadership, and teams are generally better when they have more of them. That makes sense, and like most things that sound good it is at least partly true. It's obviously not that easy and straightforward, though. Having seniors on a team can be good things, but teams full of seniors can be lousy, ...
There are a lot of problems with polls - especially in college football. In college basketball, though, the polls are an under-appreciated means of drawing insights about teams and leagues. You aren't going to learn a lot from just looking at the poll at face value, but some simple analysis of what you see can help you quickly get a sense of what's going on in the sport and where opportunities may lie. Here are five ways the polls can give you college basketball betting insights. ...
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College Basketball Polls 
When February rolls around there is still a lot of college basketball left to play before the postseason starts. For dozens of teams, though, all they are doing is putting in time. Their records are lousy, there are no post-season prospects, and it's probably getting harder and harder to get excited about playing yet another game they are likely to lose. Because the teams that are struggling don't typically get much media attention they have fallen out of the minds of the betting public as well. That means that there can be opportunities for r ...
Conference play starts right away in college basketball, and will take us right into the tournament. There are some key differences that bettors need to understand and adapt to between non-conference play and conference play if they want to have a profitable winter. Here are seven ways in which conference play is different. ...
The closer the calendar gets to March the more intense the Bubble Watch can be in college basketball. As the regular season nears the end there are several teams out there that are playing for their tournament lives. There are inevitably more teams that are worthy of playing in the NCAA Tournament than there are spaces for them. That means that some very solid teams are going to be left out. Being outside of the bubble is the worst nightmare of teams and players, so the pressure escalates exponentially as games disappear from the schedule. Som ...
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Bubble Watch Pressure 
Turnover percentage and defense field goal percentage are keys in college basketball point spread betting. Turn on SportsCenter on any given night during the NCAA college basketball season, and you will most likely find a buzzer-beating three or a monster dunk in the day's Top-10 plays. On the other hand you will very seldom see great perimeter defense or an offense controlling the ball. They're just not as flashy. ...
Betting on college basketball is great for a whole lot of reasons. One of the biggest reasons is how varied it can be - every day is different. Much more than any of the other major sports college basketball is so varied. That's what happens when you have more than 300 teams playing at a wide range of talent levels, but all playing towards one goal - making the NCAA Tournament. ...
We see it season after season. A team comes out of the gate blazing then goes into a free fall. In 2010 Syracuse started the season 18-0 and were one of the last undefeated teams standing. A loss to Pitt was followed by one to Villanova, and their confidence was totally shot. They went on to lose four straight and were clearly and obviously in a brutal slump heading into a very tough stretch of conference games. Watching them throw away a very promising start to the season got me thinking - how do you tell when a good team in a bad slump is po ...
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Slumping Teams 
Upsets are a big part of college basketball - one of the things that makes the sport so great. Teams at the top of the rankings can look so talented and potent that they are seemingly unbeatable, but then they can fall to a totally unexpected foe. Predicting those upsets can be very tough, so it can be tough finding value betting on them. Where you often can find opportunities, though, is by looking at the teams involved in the upset the next time they play. For the team that lost in shocking fashion it's important for bettors to get a quit as ...
Near the end of January in 2011 the Big Ten gave us a very exciting and very educational matchup between Purdue and Ohio State. Purdue, ranked 12th in the country at the time, was a talented team who was proving they were a force in the national picture. Ohio State was the number one team in that country, and with a loss by San Diego State that night they became the last unbeaten team standing. The game was a battle of the titans - one that you couldn't help to be interested in if you are a college basketball fan. What it didn't end up being, ...
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Ranked Team Gets Crushed 
Home court advantage isn't really a difficult concept in basketball. Teams are more comfortable when they play at home in front of their home crowd and sleep in their own beds, so they play better at home than they do on the road in most cases. Everyone understands that. When it comes to betting on college basketball, though, the challenge can be in figuring out just how significant the home court advantage is. ...
Casual sports bettors will often make the mistake of thinking that betting on basketball is betting on basketball - regardless of whether it is college basketball or the NBA. After all, in both sports you have to put a ball through a net after dribbling it on some hardwood. Those with a bit more sophistication, though, know that betting on the two sports is so different that’s it’s almost as if they are different sports. One area where the differences are pronounced is in betting totals. Here are four ways in which betting NBA totals and bettin ...
I’m not a hardcore stats geek. I find Sabermetrics and the like interesting, but I don’t devote my life to it. That being said, there is one statistic that absolutely drives me out of my mind - rebound margin. That’s one of the stats that is very frequently talked about when people are handicapping basketball and trying to sound smart. It is also an incredibly stupid statistic that doesn’t paint an accurate picture of what a team is actually capable of. At best it is misleading, and at worst it is totally deceptive. If you are relying on reboun ...
When you are handicapping football - whether college or the NBA - key numbers are an important concept to understand. A quick refresher if the details are murky: In football games there are some numbers that are a more frequent gap between the points the winner scores in a game and the points the loser scores. The most frequent of these gaps is three points. That’s because games are frequently tied until late in the fourth quarter, and are therefore decided by a field goal. Seven is the second most common number because of how often a team win ...
Betting basketball games at halftime is an intriguing and increasingly popular way to get some action. If you aren’t familiar with halftime betting the name pretty much tells you everything you need to know - sportsbooks set a new line and total for the second half of games at halftime. the line is only available from a couple of minutes after the first half ends to right before the second half starts, so your window is small. You don’t have much time to make your bets, but that means that the books also don’t have much time to set their lines. ...
A lot of basketball bettors are attracted to NBA player props - the ability to bet on the individual statistics of key players in games, or how they will match up against other stars. Those bets aren’t always a good idea, but if you are selective in the spots you pick then you can find some very nice value. Those same types of props are also available in the NCAA on the bigger games on most days, but they are overlooked by bettors far more than the NBA versions are. The NCAA props can offer some nice value as well, though. If you are familiar w ...
In a lot of ways college basketball and the NBA are the same thing - they are both basketball, the basic rules are the same, and most of the players in the NBA come from college. From a betting perspective, though, the difference between the two types of basketball is massive. In a lot of ways it’s as if they are two different sports form a betting perspective. Bettors who think that they can take what works in the NBA and succeed right away betting on college - or vice versa - are in for a rude awakening. Here are five of the ways in which bet ...
There are good reasons to bet on college basketball in the first month of the season in November, and good reasons not to bet on it then. In another article we looked at five reasons why you would want to bet on these games. Here I want to look at the other side - six reasons why betting on college basketball in the first month of the season may not be the best idea. ...
Non-conference college basketball is great for one big reason - it means we are closer to conference play and tournament season, and both of those are brilliant. Betting on the non-conference season can be fruitful for bettors. If those bettors aren’t careful, though, the non-conference schedule is littered with traps to fall into - traps that could prove very costly. Here are six college basketball non-conference traps that you’ll want to be aware of so you can avoid them: ...
Early in the college basketball season a lot of bettors won’t be familiar with what to expect from most teams because they haven’t seen them play or read much about them. That means that many of those bettors will rely heavily on the preseason and early season rankings to judge which teams are good and which teams aren’t. That’s obviously not the best approach. Early in the year the polls are largely determined by reputations and hype because there is little concrete to base things on. If you want to be a successful handicapper, then, you need ...
Astute college basketball bettors know that they can gain a big edge over the general public by paying attention to the first couple of weeks of college basketball practice in October. Midnight Madness draws some attention in some schools, but after that most bettors are too distracted by the NFL, college football, the World Series and the start of the hockey and NBA seasons to spend too much time worrying about what is going on in the campus gyms around the country. By paying attention to what is going on you can have a far more accurate pictu ...
A lot of college basketball handicappers tend to think of home court advantage as being relatively static - it will be basically be the same from game to game in the same building. That’s not always the case. There are several different circumstances in which even the most supportive and vocal of crowds can elevate their noise and enthusiasm to a higher level. That can have a big impact both on the excitement their players play with and on the way the officials call the game. Here are six situations in which the crowd could be more of a factor ...
College basketball is a great game to bet on. There are an incredible number of games to choose from, information is plentiful and easy to find, and lines - particularly early in the season - are considerably softer than in major pro sports. College basketball doesn’t get nearly as much attention as it deserves before February or March, and that means that bettors are missing out. If you don’t bet the sport regularly outside of tournament time then you really should take a look at it. If you do, here are six common mistakes that college basketb ...
Most college basketball gamblers probably know that there is good value to be had in betting on the mid-major conferences. Most bettors probably don’t spend nearly as much time betting on those conferences as they do on the big ones, though. It makes sense - there are a huge number of conferences, and most get barely any national coverage most of the year. Unless you are doing nothing but handicapping college basketball it just isn’t possible for most bettors to keep track of what is going on in every mid-major conference. There is just too mu ...
There are some good arguments that can be made for betting on college basketball in November - the first month of the season. There are some good arguments to be made for not betting on the sport at that time as well. So, that’s we’re going to do - we’ll make the arguments for both sides. I’ll make the arguments for betting on college hoops in the first month of the season here, and in another article I’ll tackle the reverse. On this side there are five good arguments to be made: ...
At the end of every college basketball regular season each conference crowns a champion. For some teams those regular season titles are extremely important and highly motivating. For others, though, it is not a particularly significant motivating factor. Bettors who are able to tell the difference between teams that will elevate their game in pursuit of a conference title down the stretch and those that will keep playing like they have been playing all along can earn valuable insight into where the value might be in key games down the stretch. ...
At the start of the college basketball season many teams choose to play an exhibition game or two in an attempt to get ready for their season. These are typically against hopelessly outmatched opponents - often from as low as Division III. If elite teams do play Division I-A opponents then they certainly won’t be good ones. These games aren’t betting opportunities, but hardcore college basketball bettors who are hungry for the season to start can still get pretty excited about them because they are better than nothing. Occasionally something ha ...
Near the end of the college basketball regular season in hundreds of gyms across the country one of the great traditions in all of sports happens - Seniors’ Night. After a player has played four or five years with a program and given their heart and soul to it Seniors’ Night gives the team, the fans, and the school a chance to recognize them and thank them for all they have done. The player’s parents and families are typically there, and it can be an emotional and inspiring ceremony. Bettors should pay close attention to Seniors’ Nights as they ...
In February of 2012 the New Mexico Lobos were red hot and were quickly becoming regarded as one of the mid-majors that could make some real noise in the NCAA tournament . They had won seven in a row capped by consecutive decisive wins over fellow Mountain West powers San Diego State and UNLV. They were rolling, and the nation was taking note. Then they went out and lost badly to a pretty lousy Colorado State team - a squad that had no business competing with the Lobos. The loss was far from a unique one for a good team, but it was a frustrating ...
In a perfect world every college basketball team would quietly but steadily improve throughout the season, and would be ready to perform at their peak by the middle of March. Of course, things rarely work out that smoothly. Quite often a team will start to slide just when they could be firing things up. A slump in March is not a disaster, but it certainly could be if it extends into the tournament when a loss is fatal. It’s important for bettors to be able to identify slumping teams that should be able to get back on track and separate them fro ...
For many college basketball bettors - especially the more casual ones - the big preseason tournaments mark the first time that they pay attention to the sport. Preseason tournaments like the Maui Invitational or the Old Spice Classic can offer big name showdowns early in the season when most other games just aren’t that interesting. These tournaments can be great betting opportunities for prepared bettors. If bettors are too casual, though, they can make costly mistakes that can put them in a big hole before the season has barely even started. ...
The profile of the Big Ten - ACC Challenge seems to grow each year. It’s an event that is purely made for TV, but with passing time there have been some rivalries built up, and teams and coaches seem to be more and more invested in winning the challenge for their conference. With the growing profile of the event there is more bettor interest every year, and more potential to make some good money. Bettors who chose to focus on this two day, 12 game event are not only treated to some great basketball action, but also some very good betting opport ...
Every college basketball season we see a couple of top five teams get absolutely crushed in a game. I’m not talking about losing games they should have won, or getting beaten by a few points. I’m talking about an epic beatdown - a 20 or 30 point margin in a game that wasn’t even as close as the score suggests. These games seem to come out of nowhere, and they obviously come as a big surprise to fans and bettors. The challenge for those bettors is to figure out if what happened was just an ugly fluke that really did come from nowhere, or if it w ...
The schedule for college basketball teams is typically straight forward. Teams start out by playing non-conference games and maybe throw in a preseason tournament. Around Christmas time the non-conference schedule ends and teams head into conference play right up to conference tournament time in late February or early March. Every so often, though, some teams deviate from that schedule a little bit by throwing a non-conference game in the middle of their conference season. There are several reasons they could do it - to highlight a game against ...
When the college basketball calendar shifts from non-conference play into the conference schedule successful bettors are always on the lookout for teams that could perform in a way that could surprise unprepared bettors. That means that they are looking for teams that are poised to be either notably better or notably worse in conference play than they were when playing their non-conference schedule. There are several different scenarios in which a team can beat expectations or fall short of them. Here are six of those situations to look out for ...
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