It's still five men a side with what started as a peach basket at each end but fans of college basketball betting face a whole new set of challenges and considerations when moving from wagering on the NBA to the NCAA game.
Let's look at a half-dozen of these elements:
Teeming with teams: Stiff competition from other bet takers pressures bookmakers into offering prices on over 200 teams, as compared to just 30 NBA clubs, so the gambler has many more options. That means, for bettors, it's a lot easier to find a bad number among 100 games than it is to find one among 13 or 14.
Home court: Of course the home court is an advantage in the NBA but disguised among basic statistics is the debilitating effect that wearisome travel has on the visiting team. NBA teams embark on road trips, often playing three games in four nights or four games in six nights across different time zones. It's a huge disadvantage for the visiting team. For that reason, NBA spreads are affected more by schedule than by actual home court.
Since NCAA teams only play about 30-32 regular season games a year, lengthy road trips aren't a factor in college play and fatigue rarely is a handicapping element. Nevertheless, with its highly partisan contingent of chanting, sign-waving, occasionally abusive student seat holders, the home court can really make a big difference in college hoops. In fact, the home court can be such an advantage that there may be as much as a 15-point swing in home-and-home series pointspreads.
For example, when LSU visited Alabama for an SEC game, Jan. 11, 2009, the Tigers were 3-point underdogs. But when the Crimson Tide came to Baton Rouge, Feb. 8, LSU closed as a 12 1/2-point favorite, a massive move of the line of 15 1/2 points in less than a month.
When Syracuse played at Georgetown last Jan. 14 in a Big East tussle, the Hoyas were 6 1/2-point favorites. But when the teams met again in Syracuse, Feb. 14, the Orange was favored by 3 1/2 points, a swing of 10 points.
Emotion: C'mon, admit it, you've seen NBA teams do little more than “mail it in” some games. It's just difficult to be motivated for every game of an 82-game schedule. But that's almost never the case in college basketball where a shorter schedule and more heated rivalries, particularly within conferences or states, all but guarantees that motivation will be anything but lacking. For that reason, assessing a team's motivation can be a crucial factor.
Vengeance: Another factor unique to college basketball is revenge. A team that lost to an opponent once often is troublesome to tame the second time around. This is a scenario that plays itself out in conference play, where splits, especially against the spread, are more common than sweeps.
Freshmen: It wasn't all that long ago that freshmen sat at the end of the bench and waited until the end of the game to get some “garbage time.” Not any more. Nowadays, if you're good enough to play, coaches put you in the game.
The emergence of freshmen as major contributors has required bookmakers and bettors to track the careers of high school seniors, monitoring their college choices and assessing the impact they may have on those programs. Kentucky, Villanova, Texas, Georgia Tech, North Carolina, Kansas, Oklahoma, Duke and Connecticut are among the schools whose recruiting hauls could have a sizable impact on their fortunes this season.
Since no sport is more affected by a single player than basketball, every new addition--freshman, junior college or transfer--has the opportunity to alter the dynamic of the team.
Three-for-all: Further complicating the oddsmaking and betting equation is that college basketball is much more like a three-act play than a seamless season.
Act I extends through the end of the year when teams play most of their non-conference games. For many, this is a chance for experimentation with different lineups and strategies, a time of growing pains that often are reflected by the pointspread. Other teams, ones with experienced players, have an obvious advantage in cohesiveness. After all, basketball is a team sport.
Act II begins with the tip-off of the conference schedule, which starts in late December or January. Teams have worked out the kinks by now and, for the most part, are ready to face a series of opponents with whom they have some familiarity. The teams may play each other as many as two or three times each season--twice in conference play and perhaps again in the league's tournament--and coaches know each other and their preferred style of play. There are few surprises and, except for those occasions when the very best teams are playing the very worst teams, close games are common.
For the fortunate, the curtain will rise for Act III, the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, in March. It is the unpredictable nature of the "Big Dance," the convergence of teams that have as much in common as Dick Vitale and hair spray, which makes "March Madness" the oddsmaking and wagering challenge that it is.
Those are six reasons why college basketball betting differs from NBA wagering.
