Trying to Reason with the College Basketball Season

Before you ever get started wading into the 351 Division I college basketball teams, distributed across 32 conferences, you should try and get your ducks lined up consulting one – or more – of the numerous preview magazines. The volume of choice for me is Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook, as I find it the most comprehensive, with the best information. I am not making a plug for Blue Ribbon and receive no remuneration for mentioning them here. We here at ESBN are simply in the education business and try very hard to put excellent information into our beloved subscriber’s hands.

A word to the wise – the volume is available in hardbound and spiral-bound, as well as digital download. I like to make notes in the margins, so I get the hard-copy. Since the spiral-bound has been available, I have been receiving it and much prefer it over the hardbound copy, as it will stay open on the page you want it to. Digital download is good too, if that is how you like to roll. There are plenty of other magazines out there including Athlon and Lindy’s.

There is much to know from the betting perspective. Blue Ribbon does an excellent job introducing you to the teams and the coaching staffs. Just like in college football, coaches and staff’s move around every year. Players graduate, transfer and leave. Some are injured at the start of the season, some don’t close out the season. The point is, there’s a lot going on that can help us find an edge from the very first tip-off all the way to the championship game tip-off.

You will need some stats. You can get them anywhere. The current gold standard, in my opinion, is KenPom. Like with Blue Ribbon, this is not a commercial plug and I receive no remuneration for recommending the site. I’m just trying to assist you in finding the best information. Sagarin Ratings are also very helpful. I encourage you to find the best fit for you and a few internet searches will assist you in finding what you like.

The rest of this column will focus on a sharp angle or two that most people or websites will not suggest. The value in betting college basketball is not found handicapping and betting the Goliaths of the sport. We will pay attention to them, but most of our bets will be on the under-the-radar teams from lesser known conferences. We will pay most of our attention to the mid-majors and the virtually unknowns. Always keep an eye on what the big programs are doing, and bet them if you find value, as this will help come tournament time, but most of the betting value will be on teams you may have never heard of.

Much of the value betting college basketball is derived from the oddsmakers inability to remain current on all 351 Division I teams. They tend to spend most of their time on the marquee matchups, because this is where most bettors will bet and their databases have the best information to set the sharpest lines. Why bother with that when we don’t have to?

But don’t go running off with only half the information…it is vital to know which conferences and which games the oddsmakers will “line.” A “lined game” is simply a game that has a betting line. You can’t bet games that have not been lined and, for this reason, not all teams and not all conferences are created equal.

Or course the major conferences will always have lined games – ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Pac-12 and the like, as will the other notable conferences like American Athletic, Conference USA, Mid-American and Mountain West. But I like to keep an eye on the “lesser” conferences for the best value betting opportunities. These conferences are under-the-radar for many college bettors and almost always have lined games, on the days they play. Note that not every conference is in action every day. They tend to play games on regular schedules. If you go through the published schedules in Blue Ribbon, you can see the schedules and know when they play. Anyway, I like to focus on the following conferences, as most of their games will be lined, both out of conference and in-conference:

• Big Sky
• Big West
• Colonial
• Horizon
• Ivy
• Metro Atlantic
• Missouri Valley
• Ohio Valley
• Summit
• West Coast

For those of you with Blue Ribbon, let’s consider the Missouri Valley Conference. Blue Ribbon ranks the expected outcome and finishing places for each of the teams. I am using the 2018-2019 Yearbook and Illinois State is expected to win the conference, with Drake placing last. Note, this is a forecast only. There are plenty of games to be played before any of this becomes reality. Yet, we can use this forecast in handicapping. In fact, this has direct betting value if you want it.

Many oddsmakers will hang lines on the forecasted winner of their individual conferences. Unless there is a run-away favorite to win, you can often find very favorable odds on the conference winner, especially if you have done your homework and know a little something about the teams and schedules.

Another nugget of value we can get from this is forecasting what teams will get into the March Madness tournament. For those of you who are new to this, the NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament consists of 64 teams (68 actually, but we’re not going to get into that right now). This is a very unique tournament. The winners of each of the 32 basketball conferences get an “automatic bid” into the Tournament. So, all you gotta do is win – and you’re in! Using this same Illinois State example, you might even find a proposition wager that offers odds on Illinois State getting into the tournament. Well, Blue Ribbon has already forecast that to happen! Of course, always do your own work, but here is an excellent source of information to use as part of your analysis.

Let’s go off the reservation a bit and take a look at schedule quirkiness. Texas Southern, under head coach Mike Davis, has played the absolutely most difficult non-conference schedule in Division I college basketball. Texas Southern plays in the Southwestern Athletic Conference and made it into March Madness by virtue of an automatic bid. ESPN ran a graphic after the selection show noting that Texas Southern was the ONLY team that has ever made it into the tournament after losing their first 13 games! People all over the sportsbook were saying the same thing, implying Texas Southern was awful.

But I knew the schedule they played and KNEW Texas Southern would be ready for conference play and would indeed win the automatic bid. While coach Davis has moved on to Detroit Mercy, the 2018-2019 non-conference schedule is similarly loaded with college basketball powerhouses. Six away games to start the season at Baylor, Georgia, Iowa State, San Diego State, Evansville and Oregon! Brutal! However, this schedule will mold the players into a team.

It’s a young team, so we will have to keep an eye on them in conference play, and are forecast to finish second, behind Prairie View. But a schedule like this is developed for one reason – to get the team ready to play – everybody! After playing that “murderer’s row” do you think this team will be intimidated by any team – no matter where they play?

Okay, so that’s an introduction on the type of stuff you should be looking at and considering to get ready for the college basketball season. As the current year stats come up on some of the sites I use, I will take you through an approach to how I handicap an early season college basketball matchup.