Cashing in on the Louisville Money-Making Express

Coach Rick Pitino is a truly unique individual, he gets life. Not just in the basketball sense, but on broader subjects. Of course he wrote the obligatory basketball book - Full-court Pressure: A Year in Kentucky Basketball, when he was at Lexington, on his way to winning national championship. However, his scope is much larger, with books like – Success is a Choice and Lead to Success, telling stories how to overachieve and be a great leader in business and in life. Though no known new book is forthcoming, the title would be easy to identify for astute followers of Pitino at Louisville - Finding Success Betting the Big East.

In what arguably has been the toughest conference in college basketball over the last three years, Coach Pitino’s team’s are 38-10 the last three years in the regular season in the conference and an astonishing 36-11-1 against the spread. That is +23.9 units of profit playing some of the fiercest competition any team can face.

The Cardinals (21-5, 16-10 ATS) are one of four teams with a pair of losses in the Big East, still with hopes of trying to win the league regular season title. Louisville has won and covered three in a row since running into the Notre Dame buzz saw on the road. Louisville responded with home wins over DePaul and Providence by a combined 63 points and overcame a good Cincinnati team on there home court 72-63, as 5.5-point favorites, which even impressed the coach.

“I think our passing has gotten better,” Pitino said. “We made some excellent passes. We executed great against their full-court pressure. We just played a terrific game.”

Louisville will play a second straight conference road game at ghastly Georgetown (14-11, 7-13-1 ATS). The Cardinals make every sports bettor giddy, with their 22-4 ATS road record since 2007. Part of the Cards success has come in the second month of the year, where they are 17-4 against the oddsmakers number. With Pitino’s books being about learning to build success the right way, his teams the last three years are 15-4 ATS off a road win.

Coach John Thompson III might have gone to Amazon.com and picked up enough copies of Pitino’s books and handed them out to his players once the new year arrived. Georgetown was supposed to be run of the mill in conference, but after knocking then No.1 Connecticut at there place to raise record to 10-1, hopes of Hoyas uprising were taking place. Similar to the euphoria of President Barack Obama taking up residence in nearly Washington, D.C., reality set in and problems arose.

If any team has a weaknesses, conference opponents will be the ones to expose them and Georgetown ended up with a Pandora’s boxful. The Hoyas have lost eight of 10 (1-8-1 ATS) and are 4-10 and 2-11-1 ATS since hitting 2009. When asked if he thought this was a difficult season, Thompson offered these thoughts.

“Period. Not just at Georgetown,” Thompson said. “But we’ll get through this. Yeah, it’s trying. But we’re going to do what we do. We’re going to try to get better from the top on down.” The Hoyas are 5-9 and 3-11 ATS in the Big East.

Despite the problems, oddsmakers haven’t written off Georgetown, as they opened as a one-point underdog with a total of 130 at many sportsbooks. When checking different angles, it’s not easy to support G-Town, since they are 0-8 ATS at home when the line is +3 to -3. The Cardinals would look to be in a more favorable position with 13-2 ATS mark as road favorite or pick and 8-1 ATS if the number is six or less.

Angles, trends and book sales don’t win games, players and coaches do. ESPN will have the next story unfold for both teams at 7 Eastern on Big Monday, with likely many bettors waiting for Pitino’s club to add another winning chapter.