College Hoops Strength of Schedule

ADDING STRENGTH OF SCHEDULE TO YOUR COLLEGE BASKETBALL HANDICAPPING REGIME

I introduced how to handicap early season college basketball in this Advanced Content blog. Now that most college hoops teams have played about 10 games or so, we can add another important handicapping criteria to our arsenal – Strength of Schedule.

Strength of Schedule (SOS) is becoming more and more important, but I don’t think many handicappers adequately consider how powerful it can be when evaluating two teams scheduled to play each other. SOS has been utilized in RPI ratings and is also included in the new NET ratings being utilized for the NCAA March Madness tournament.

Sagarin Ratings rank all teams based on this important criteria, from most difficult schedule to least difficult schedule. KenPom does also, essentially establishing 100 as the average, base Strength of Schedule. Then KenPom evaluates the schedules played by each team. A SOS greater than 100 indicates a more difficult schedule played so far in the season. Less than 100 indicates an easier schedule played.

I prefer using Sagarin and I will tell you why a little later in this article. Let’s look at a real world example between Niagara and Cleveland State played December 19, 2018. The line opened with Niagara as 1-point road favorites. Based on the opening line, we can get to work.

Sagarin RatingsRatingWLSchedule Rank
261 Niagara65.455568.56 (298)
224 Cleveland State67.713872.73 (150)

The first number is the overall ranking of the squad from 1 (best team in the nation) to 353 (worst). Obviously, we have the team name, then the Rating. Sagarin then shows us the current Win/Loss record and then the Schedule Rank – first in computed form, then how it ranks the team, again from best (1) to worst (353).

From the rating, we can do simple subtraction, subtracting the smaller number from the larger number to come up with the betting line on a neutral court. So, Cleveland State is about 2.25 points (rounded) better than Niagara, again, on a neutral court. The rule of thumb is to add about 3.0 points to the home team for home court advantage (HCA). The HCA may be more or less than this “rule of thumb” number, so that is one of our job’s as a handicapper – to figure what the HCA may be. For this exercise, let’s go with 3.0 points. Thus, Cleveland State playing at home would be expected to win by about five (5.0) points.

Now look at the Schedule Rank. Niagara is 298 (out of 353) and Cleveland State is 150. Here is where I find Strength of Schedule so valuable in handicapping – For every 50 point difference one team plays a harder schedule than the other, I ADD 1.0 points to my spread for the team that has played the more difficult schedule. Thus, since Cleveland State has played the more difficult schedule, relatively, than Niagara, I add another 3.0 points to Cleveland State to come up with my betting line. So, we had 2.0 points from the relative Ratings difference, then added 3.0 points for HCA. Now I add 3.0 points to account for the more difficult schedule, giving a final total of 8.0 points. Cleveland State, based on this analysis, should win this game, at home, by at least 8.0 points.

Note that I said nothing about each team’s win/loss record. Most of the time, I pay no attention to this – it is mostly meaningless for this handicapping exercise, and here’s why. The team that has played the more difficult schedule would be expected to have more losses than the team with the relatively easier schedule. Of course, this does not hold true for the elite teams like Duke, Kentucky, Virginia, etc. They play relatively difficult schedules but are good enough to win those difficult games, most of the time.

Final Score – Cleveland State 82 Niagara 60

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