NCAA basketball Odds Can Make You Or Break You
There are many ways to make money by properly handicapping college basketball lines, but there’s definitely one underrated method that you should not fall asleep on. Throughout the course of the season, you can find ways to make money by latching onto a particular conference or set of teams with which you are familiar and maximize your profit by gauging the value of these teams against the value the oddsmakers assign them.
And, of course, there’s always the NCAA Tournament, the famed March Madness event in which you can pinpoint any number of underdogs and ride their coat tails into the winner’s circle.
But there’s one major profitable opportunity with college basketball lines that you should not take for granted, and that is the conference tournaments that take place right before the NCAA Tournament. You can argue the necessity of such tournaments, especially since they seem to harm some very good mid-major teams that dominate their conferences only to lose in the conference tournament. If the conference gets just one automatic bid, such a performance can cost a team its season. It can also mean the difference between a major-name school receiving a No. 1 seed, or falling as far as potentially a No. 3 or No. 4 seed if they suffer an early upset in the conference tournament.
There’s no disputing that some serious cash can be made by properly handicapping these conference tournaments. The key is finding which so-called “bubble” teams must win or at least make a deep run in the conference tournament in order to receive an NCAA Tournament bid. Every year, there are several teams that fit this category and they aren’t hard to find; often they are talented teams that have underachieved during the regular season and this is their last chance to salvage some dignity, and perhaps save the coach’s job in the process. Take last year’s ACC Tournament, for example, a conference that historically sees an underdog make a deep run and in some cases go all the way to the title. Heading into last year’s tournament, chronic underachiever Clemson was an eight-loss team looking at its second straight disappointing season and the chance it might again be left out of the Big Dance. Coach Oliver Purnell’s job certainly was in jeopardy as he was establishing a reputation as a coach who recruited great talent but could never get the most out of his clubs on the basketball court. Clemson was a team sorely in need of a great conference tournament run in order to save its season.
The Tigers got just that, defeating a solid Boston College club in the first round before pulling a stunning upset over Duke in the semifinals that likely secured their NCAA Tournament invitation. Clemson went on to give top-seeded North Carolina all it could handle in the title game before falling 86-81. Even with the loss, Clemson accomplished its goal and covered three straight times for bettors in the process.
This is the place to look for value in conference tournaments. Pinpoint a team that had high expectations to start the season then came up well short – such as this year’s Georgetown club – and understands the need for a strong run in the conference tournament in order to reach the NCAAs. It helps if the program has a reputable coach whose team had an off-year, and this is often the case with extremely competitive major conferences in which there is little room for error.
On occasion, the favorite will win a conference tournament, but you have to be secure that the coach values the need to play well right as the NCAA Tournament approaches. Every coach of a top-tier team will say the right things and claim his team is motivated to play well, but so often you see the regular-season champ take a dive in the early rounds of the conference tournament simply because they are not as motivated as their desperate opponent. As for the coaches who are better suited at motivational tactics and insist their teams be on top of their game heading into March Madness, there can be some value found in these teams.
For instance, each Final Four participant in 2008 – Kansas, North Carolina, UCLA and Memphis – won its conference tournament. This speaks to the clear advantage of having a No. 1 seed over any other spot and the clear edge for top teams who are playing their best heading into the NCAA Tournament.
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