College Basketball Handicapping Articles

College Basketball Handicapping: Predicting the Line on Marquee Matchups
by Aaron Smith - 11/27/2012

I hope everyone has recovered from the huge Thanksgiving meals. It’s always a great time of the year, and basketball kicks off in a big way during this late-November period. Indiana still sits at the top of the new Top 25 polls, but Duke is now a strong second. The Blue Devils have wins over Kentucky and Louisville early in the season, and it looks like they are primed for a big season. With Michigan and Ohio State sitting at spots three and four, the Big Ten Conference has three of the top four teams in the nation.

College Basketball Picks: North Carolina at Indiana Odds and Predictions
by Alan Matthews - 11/26/2012

Probably the best event before conference play begins in college basketball arrives on Tuesday and Wednesday this week with the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. The made-for-ESPN Challenge has been a huge success so far, and the shifting landscape might show the Big Ten has surpassed the ACC in basketball. While the ACC won the first 10 Challenges, the Big Ten won 8-4 last year, and four of those wins came on the road. It was the Big Ten’s third straight Commissioner’s Cup.

College Basketball Handicapping: Early Betting Surprises
by T.O. Whenham - 11/21/2012

The college basketball season is very young, but already there are teams that have been surprising for bettors — either because of their strength or their unexpected weakness. Here are eight teams that have been a betting surprise for some reason so far:

College Basketball Handicapping: Most Volatile Ranked Teams
by T.O. Whenham - 11/21/2012

Sometimes in college sports there are teams that come into the season highly-ranked, and you have little doubt that they will remain highly-ranked throughout the season. More often, though, teams are highly-ranked because of their potential, but the real chance exists that they could fail to meet expectations and could fall out of the rankings entirely. College football this year provided a perfect example — USC came into the season ranked first overall, and the Trojans now sit with their season in shambles at 7-4.

College Basketball Handicapping: Predicting the Line on Marquee Matchups
by Aaron Smith - 11/20/2012

The college basketball season has been underway for about 10 days, but it feels like the holiday tournaments this week mark the time when the nation as a whole starts paying attention. College football’s regular season is winding down, and the oddsmakers will certainly start spending more time on college hoops numbers as the season moves along. In this weekly column, we’ll be taking a look at the biggest games of the week and how they may play out.

Handicapping the College Basketball Preseason Tournaments
by T.O. Whenham - 11/16/2012

One of the many great parts of the college basketball season is the preseason tournaments we are treated to around Thanksgiving. There are a lot, and some are duds, but the best of the tournaments deliver unconventional matchups and thrilling action. It’s a good early test of how teams stack up, and how they can handle pressure.

College Basketball Betting: Off-the-Radar Value Teams
by T.O. Whenham - 11/14/2012

The college basketball season is, happily, underway. There are always lots of teams that get plenty of attention from the media, but there are so many teams that good teams can easily slip under the radar and get less attention from the public than they deserve. Here are six teams that stand out to me because they have the potential to make some noise and exceed early expectations.

College Basketball Conference Futures Odds and Predictions
by Alan Matthews - 11/12/2012

The college basketball season tipped off on Friday, but conference play around the country won’t begin until the end of December or early in the New Year. Realistically, winning your conference is nice but doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things to the top teams unless it earns you a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. It can mean everything for NCAA bubble teams to get that automatic bid.

2012-13 Mountain West Conference Basketball Predictions and Betting Odds
by Robert Ferringo - 11/2/2012

The 2011-12 season was a banner year for the Mountain West. A lot of bobbleheads assumed that this league – which is really the top tier of the “mid-major” leagues, to the point where they really blur the line between “major” and “mid-major” conference – was going to suffer after losing Utah and BYU.

2012-13 Atlantic 10 Conference Basketball Predictions and Betting Odds
by Robert Ferringo - 11/2/2012

If you thought the Big East was gargantuan, you should check out the Atlantic 10. This mega-mid-major conference welcomes in Butler and VCU this season to pump the total number of teams in the league up to 16. There will be some teams taking their ball and moving along next season. But for this year the Atlantic 10 is the biggest league in the country.

2012-13 MAC Basketball Predictions and Betting Odds
by Aaron Smith - 11/2/2012

The Mid-American Conference isn’t among the biggest of names in college basketball, but those who follow the sport closely know that there are some quality teams that come out of this conference. Last year was a perfect example; the Ohio Bobcats advanced to the Sweet 16 before falling in overtime in a heartbreaking loss to North Carolina. The Bobcats were only seconds away from an Elite Eight berth.

2012-13 Big East Basketball Odds and Betting Predictions
by Robert Ferringo - 10/25/2012

Rest in peace, Big East. This is the final season of the Big East as we know it. Syracuse, Pittsburgh and Notre Dame are defecting to the ACC. Connecticut is entering the post-Calhoun era amidst a cloud of uncertainty and a postseason ban. And with several bizarre, football-driven realignment plans heading down the pipe it is clear that the years of The Beast being the dominating college basketball conference in the nation are coming to a close.

2012-13 Big Ten Basketball Odds and Betting Predictions
by Robert Ferringo - 10/23/2012

The Big Ten experienced a revival last season, with peak performance and parity resulting in a solid season for the boys in the Great Lakes region. Ohio State earned a trip to the Final Four, and the league finished with five teams ranked in the Top 16 in the final Associated Press poll of the 2011-12 season.

2012-13 SEC Basketball Odds and Betting Predictions
by Robert Ferringo - 10/23/2012

SEC basketball was collateral damage in the big BCS college football shakeup of 2011. Now comprised of a whopping 14 teams, the SEC is a bloated mess of college hoops pretenders. At one time this league had some of the best basketball in the nation. But right now it is a dominating Kentucky team, a couple of second-rate programs, and a host of third- and fourth-rate schools simply providing their fan base a distraction between kickoffs.

College Basketball Handicapping: Teams With Great Betting Value
by T.O. Whenham - 10/23/2012

Midnight Madness has come and gone, so the college basketball season is just around the corner. I can’t wait. College basketball is a brilliant game to watch and an even better one to bet on. There are so many teams and so many games that value is out there to be found for those willing to do the work to find it.

2012-13 Pac-12 Basketball Odds and Betting Predictions
by Robert Ferringo - 10/18/2012

The Pac-12 was easily the most underrated conference in college basketball last season. And if I were a player in this venerable league, I’d be getting pretty pissed off about the second-class status that this conference has been shackled with over the past few seasons.

2012-13 Big 12 Basketball Odds and Betting Predictions
by Robert Ferringo - 10/18/2012

The math doesn’t add up in Big 12 basketball. Let’s ignore the fact that there are only 10 teams in the Big 12. And we’ll overlook the fact that the conference reshuffling that sucked Missouri and Texas A&M into the SEC cost college basketball 1) one of the best rivalries in the sport (Kansas-Missouri) and 2) one of the most efficient and profitable teams in college basketball betting, Texas A&M.

2012-13 ACC Basketball Odds and Betting Predictions
by Robert Ferringo - 10/16/2012

I said last year that the ACC sucked. And it did. Oh, it did. The ACC sent just five teams to the NCAA Tournament, with North Carolina State barely nudging their way into the Field of 68. In terms of college basketball betting, only five of the 12 teams in the league finished with profitable season for their backers. The most profitable team in the league was N.C. State, earning bettors a paltry +260 for the year. That was the lowest the total for best bet of any conference in the country.

College Basketball Handicapping: Ranking Conference Tournaments
by T.O. Whenham - 3/6/2012

March is here, and I couldn’t be more excited. Starting this week with the conference tournaments we are entering into one of the most exciting months of the sports calendar. This is one of the best times of the year to be a sports bettor. Conference tournaments don’t get quite the attention that the main event does starting next week. However, they typically offer no shortage of drama, excitement, and the potential for profit.

College Hoops Handicapping Tips for Betting on Conference Tournaments
by Nicholas Tolomeo - 3/6/2012

No two college basketball conference tournaments are exactly alike. From seeding, to timing, to byes and double byes, campus locations and neutral sites, conference tournaments are not created equally. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when handicapping college hoops conference tournaments.