Hit the Road - Betting the NBA

NBA road trips have their own dynamics. A lot of beliefs on the effect of road trips, be they correct or incorrect, are incorporated into people’s handicapping of NBA games. Let’s look at the facts.

We’ll start with the basics. Since the start of the 2004 season, road teams overall win straight-up 40.3% of the time covering the spread in 51.5% of those games. If the road team is favored over the home squad, they have won outright almost two-thirds of the games, 66.0% while beating the linesmaker’s number at a 52.7% clip. Road underdogs don’t do as well, a 29.5% SU mark and 51.2% ATS. The Over/Under records had no significance.

In handicapping a sport so influenced by factors beyond the fundamental capabilities of the teams, I try to find situations that have occurred historically that will give me an advantage on knowing where to put my money. Let’s see if we can find some situations that give us a betting edge.

We’ll take our road team in any away game when it is laying points and add the qualifier of it playing an away game without having any rest, a back-to-back. These games the past three seasons are going Under the total 56.1% of the time. While this is not a spot where I would blindly bet the Under, it does make me examine very closely when I am considering playing the Over on a road favorite.

An even stronger situation for our team favored in a game on the road is when they have at least one day of rest before their game and the opponent doesn’t have any rest. In this case, our roadies have a 59.3% record against the point spread tally.

There is the often-heard phrase that a team wants to win all of their home games and win half of their road games. So when a team is on a four-game road trip and has lost their first two games, following this premise, this team would be one to bet on in game three of their trek. That’s not the case as it is almost an exact 50-50 scenario betting on the side of our visitor. However, it is a good spot for the Under in that third game coming in 58% of the time. If that third game is against a conference foe, the Under improves to 62.2%. Or, a real super spot for the UNDER, 87.5%, since 2001, is when that visiting team is favored in that third game.

You would think that a team who is on a four-game road trip would really bear down and be focused in the fourth game if they lost the first three games. That is the case over the past three years with the team trying to avoid the road goose egg covering 57.6% of that final game before heading home. A slightly better wager in this situation is on the Under with it being profitable 59.4% of the time.

The Under also comes through quite well at a 77.8% frequency in the last game of a four-game trip if our team won the opening match on the road but then dropped the next two. I had to go back ten years to get even more than a ten-game sample, but in this situation if our road team is favored they are 10-2 ATS.

One handicapping method some people use is to play on a team when they are playing the rubber match of a road trip to finish either with a winning trip or a losing one. You get a small advantage in the last game of a five game road trip betting on a team that has split their previous four games, 54.6%. The Under happens 54.5% of the time.

In three game road trips, teams that have split the past two games, do cover the point spread 55.5% of the time. If they are a favorite in the final game of that short trip, the visitor improves slightly to a winning pace of 59.2%. The best place to make money in this deciding road match, a 65% winner, is to play the Under if the visiting team has a winning percentage of over 60% of their games season to date.

I wondered how teams that are going on a road trip do if the first game they are playing is without any rest. Going back five years with teams starting a three-game road trip without a day of rest, it was a negative situation at 37-55 ATS, only covering the number 40.2% of the time. The O/U record is almost exactly the same, 37-57, 39.4%. If the road team lost their last home game before starting out on the road, betting against the visitor remains closely the same, but putting money on the Under improves to a 69.1% winner.

Interestingly enough, adding a game to the trip where teams are starting a four-game swing from home with the first game being played without any rest shows the visiting team slightly covering more games than not. However, the Under is still a good wager paying off 63% of the time. It is quite rare for a team to start a road trip longer than four games to play the first game with zero rest.

The first game of a road trip can have significance. On the initial match of a four-game trip, if a traveling team has a losing record, winning less than 50% of their games, but they won their last game before starting the journey, the Under occurs at a rate of 64.3%. Increase the longevity of the trip by one game and you still have almost exactly the same results, 65.1%. If you decrease the trip by one game to three-games or move it up to six contests long, there is no advantage at all.

Let’s change one parameter of the previous situation with that below .500 team on their first road game out of four consecutive away. Instead of winning their final home game before starting out on the road, if our team lost that contest, they cover the spread at a very healthy 65.6% rate since the 2000 season, 40-21. After a home loss, the team is motivated to avoid starting a road trip on a losing note.

We’ve looked at the first games of longer road trips. Shorter road trips also give us some good spots. In the first game of a quick two-game trip before returning home, teams that have a bad record winning less than 40% of their games do quite well against the spread, 61%, if they won their previous game at home. If you take the opposite of those two qualifiers, a good team winning more than 60% of their games but who lost their last home game, and is also in the first of a two-game road swing, the Under is the most profitable place to put your money, 77.3%.

Examining the initial game of a three-game segment away from home with no additional qualifiers, there was not an advantage large enough worth noting. However, if you make the visitor a favorite over the home team in that first contest, they are winning SU 71.4% of the games, 55-22, while covering 64.5% of the games. The Over is a winner in 57.9% of these contests. If the visiting squad is getting points instead of laying them, the Under comes up at a 56.7% frequency.

While we have only scratched the surface on edges present in road trips, we did find some advantages worth looking for. To summarize some of these:


Away Favorite without rest: 56.1% Under advantage

Away Favorite with rest vs. opponent without rest: 59.3% ATS advantage

Game 3 of 4-game road trip & visitor lost previous 2 games: 58.0% Under advantage

Same as directly above with it being a conference game: 62.2% Under advantage

Rubber match of 3-game road trip and Away Favorite: 59.2% ATS advantage

First game of a road trip and game is being played with zero rest: Play the Under

First game of a 4 to 5 game road trip by a team with a losing record: Play the Under

First game of a 3-game road trip and Away Favorite: 64.5% ATS advantage

First game of a 3-game road trip and Away Favorite: 57.9% Over advantage

Jim Kruger of Vegas Sports Authority makes writing contribution.

The Importance of Offensive Efficiency in College Hoops

While in college, I got a job as a cave guide one summer at a regional theme park, Silver Dollar City, in Branson, MO. It is based on an 1880’s Ozark Mountain village and was built around a large cave that originally was believed would be a great source of marble. Marble was never found in the cave but a St. Louis entrepreneur, Henry T. Blow (real name, honest), made a fortune mining bat guano in the cave and changed its name from Marble Cave to Marvel Cave. I quickly learned how to get a group of 60 people through the cave in our allotted one-hour time frame. After about a week of being sincere and passionate answering tourists’ questions extensively, I became jaded. It was hard to tolerate people continuously asking me “how long did it take to dig this cave” and “what would we do if an earthquake hit?” I discovered working in a theme park produced an “us against the tourist” mentality rather quickly.

Instead of talking about nature’s underground springs, I told people the water coming down the wall in the cave was from a leak in the bathroom above. Kids learned from me it was okay to lick stalactites and that they tasted like lemonade.

You can only imagine the other ideas came up with, yes, I was a terrible cave guide. But, more importantly, I was an efficient cave guide. I got people through the cave and I made every moment count. I walked while answering questions so people had to walk with me. Not to waste time, I used a catchy phrase, “as the mites go up, the tights go down”, to explain the differences between stalactites and stalagmites. I didn’t lose tourists wandering away from the tour. Lemmings, and tourists, like to keep moving and don’t enjoy being enclosed in small areas.

Just like in giving cave tours, efficiency is very important in college basketball. Basically, efficiency is accomplishing something with a minimum expenditure of time and effort.

Offensive efficiency is a much better method of measuring how good a team is on offense rather than just looking at how many points they score in a game. A team’s offensive efficiency is simply the points they score per 100 offensive possessions. A team who plays at a very fast pace might score a lot of points but not be very efficient offensively.

A perfect example of this is Georgia Tech this year. The Yellow Jackets play at the 16th fastest pace in the country, 73.3. This number represents the average number of possessions Georgia Tech gets in a game this season. They are averaging 74.1 points per game, a pretty respectable number. However, their offensive efficiency rating, adjusted for added weight of recent games, strength of opponent’s played, and game locations, is only 99.2. That number means Georgia Tech does not average one point per possession.

Compare this to Niagara who plays at a slower pace, 71.7, but has a considerably better OE rating of 108.5. Even with a slower tempo, the Purple Aces average 5.8 points per game more than the Techsters. Georgia Tech is 4-8 ATS, Niagara is 12-5.

One of the greatest advantages a handicapper can attain is when he has spotted a team turning it around. That can be a team getting better or a team getting worse.

Teams with first-year coaches can take a number of games to learn the new systems. Learning a new offense or playing a different style of defense is a task that improves with experience. New players are becoming acclimated to each other and are performing more like a team instead of five individuals. Sometimes mid-season transfers, previously injured players, or formerly academically suspended players are now able to play.

Many positive turnarounds happen during the end of the year holidays when students aren’t in class and there are no rules for how long a team can practice in one day. Most teams are playing limited games during this span so the players practically live in the gym. Without class and most students not around, distractions are limited.

By paying attention to the offensive and defensive efficiency ratings on a game-by-game basis, sometimes a turnaround can be spotted before the oddsmaker notices it and adjusts the lines accordingly. This gives the cognizant capper an advantage and he can find extra value in some games.

UNC-Greensboro of the Southern Conference has one of the worst offensive efficiency ratings in the country. Incidentally, the national average for the 344 Division 1 schools is 100.2. Excluding a game against NAIA Webber International University, in 10 games, the Spartans had not achieved higher than a 94.4 offensive efficiency rating in a game. Their highest point total for any game was 62 points even though they had a middle-of-the-pack pace rating of 67.1. Their straight-up record was 2-10 and a dismal 1-8 ATS.

In a road conference game on January 8th, UNC-Greensboro was a 16-point underdog to Western Carolina. They lost to a good Western Carolina squad by only five points. What was most impressive was a 113.0 OE rating the Spartans achieved.

Their next game two days later was at Appalachian St. as a 13.5 point dog. UNC-Greensboro won in overtime shooting over 50% for the first time this season and even bested their previous game’s OE with a 117.7 rating. These two games improved their OE rating from 336th 82.3 to their current #316, 88.6.

What is happening in Greensboro? First, freshman 6-7 F Damian Eargle was inserted into the starting line-up playing the most minutes for him of the season and scoring 25 points in their win. Turnovers were also cut by ten below their seasonal average.

Second, this looks like a team coming together. One of the school’s greatest players of all time, two-time SoCon Player of the Year, Kyle Hines, used up his eligibility last year. Hines was everything to this team last season scoring 19.1 ppg, 9.6 rpg, 95 blocks, and making all-conference four years in a row. Add the loss of two other starters, your second leading scorer and top two assist men, and you get a team close to starting from scratch.

While it is very possible the Spartans have a letdown in their next game after their overtime upset, UNC-Greensboro is going to be a team I keep my eye on.

Everybody always loves systems. Systems seem to be a short-cut to having to do the extra research and work in handicapping a game. But, the bottom line is winning and it really doesn’t matter how you got there. What sports bettor wouldn’t love to have a child that could pick winners at the blazing success rate Homer Simpson had in his daughter Lisa a few years ago in that classic episode. (Well, by my standards it was a classic)

While this isn’t a system for blindly picking teams, it is a guideline you can use for helping you select winners in college hoops. The basic premise is to only play on the team that has an adjusted offensive efficiency rating four points or higher than their opponent. There are system exclusions such as don’t play on double-digit favorites no matter what the difference in OE ratings are. There are a number of other school-specific exclusions such as don’t play against Bradley or Nebraska at home.

It is a good way to help narrow large cards down. This does not mean you should ignore schools that don’t have at least a four-point differential. By watching teams’ offensive efficiency ratings It helps keep you in tune with how schools are doing and not judge them by how many points they score. You will realize quickly you usually don’t want to lay a number of points on a team that has a low OE. Low OE teams can go on scoring droughts due to excessive turnovers, poor shooting, not getting to the free throw line very often, and having a poor FT%. For totals players, squads with a poor OE rating are ones you want to consider putting on your Under list.

Paying close attention to teams offensive efficiency ratings will help your handicapping in a number of ways. Just don’t ask a cave guide what OE ratings mean.

Note - These ratings are at http://www.kenpom.com/.

Jim Kruger is the main man behind Vegas Sports Authority.

Double-Digit NBA Pointspreads and Lots More

I love handicapping and betting the NBA as well as enjoy reading articles and books about the same. I continuously read or talk to people that say there is no way to beat the NBA on a regular basis. I understand why they feel that way. It can be very frustrating to watch a team blow a 20-point second-half lead or an elite team lose outright to a cellar-dweller. If you are going to bet the NBA, you first have to realize those type of games are going to happen. The NBA is the most situational sport to handicap bar none. There are games with teams that have no rest versus teams with two or three days rest. There are teams that have a non-conference game in between two divisional games. If you just handicap NBA games based on fundamentals, I believe you are missing the big picture and will have a very difficult time in winning on a consistent basis.

There are as many different thoughts and ideas on how to handicap the NBA as there are people that bet it. As I did last year, this season I will again write about betting myths, handicapping fallacies, and other pertinent points involving betting the NBA. The point is to help readers understand what handicapping the NBA entails and how to make money at doing so.

I just read an article that somebody had written and put on the Internet talking about how to handicap the NBA. Their first rule was to eliminate any game with a double-digit point spread. If you would have done this last year, you would have immediately eliminated 19.6% of all regular season games, 237 games. That is one reason why I love the NBA: there is a plethora of games and they happen every single day, even Christmas and Thanksgiving. I get to pick and choose what games I bet on but the oddsmaker has to put lines and totals up for every game. In my mind, I get to cherry pick which gives me the advantage.

Saying to eliminate double-digit dogs from betting consideration caught me by surprise because there are some very good trends involving double-digit dogs that are worthy of betting. Yes, they may take some work to uncover, but isn't that is what handicapping is all about? Anybody who says to not even consider games with double-digit dogs needs to quickly re-examine their line of logic.

A great trend that I found on the StatFox FoxSheets is to bet on a road double-digit underdog when it is playing a team that has lost two of its last three games. The qualifier is the double-digit favorite has to be a team with a winning record but less than a 60% winning percentage. Over the past five years, betting on this trend, you would have a 31-9 record, 77.5%. The double-digit dog sees a vulnerable team in their opponent as they have dropped some games recently and they aren't a first-tier NBA team. The dog definitely has some bite to it. Its bite gets bigger to the tune of 16-2 ATS if the dog was playing at home in their previous game.

Let's look at some other profitable trends involving double-digit dogs. A team's rest and their opponent's rest can have a factor in the outcome of a game. Double-digit dogs over the past five years that have rest and are playing a team who played a game yesterday don't give us a trend worth betting on a side, but we do have a 60% winning wager betting on the Under. That is an easy-to-find situation that pays nicely.

There are many factors to look at in handicapping the NBA. One qualifier to take into account is the quality of the teams based on their winning percentage. If our double-digit dog is winning only 30% of less of it's games, not a very good team, and they are playing a team with a 60% or better winning percentage, the Under happens 57.1% of the time, 76-57, over the past three years. We can improve our winning percentage to 64% if both teams have played their previous game on the road.

A lot of handicappers like to bet on teams that have recently covered the spread on a better than average basis. It is best to look at very basic trends and to add different qualifiers to such teams. Let’s start with a team that is on a 3 game ATS covering streak as a double-digit dog. Again, there is nothing worthwhile in betting on the double-digit dog, just a 51.4% winner over the past five years. However, if you bet the Under in such a situation, you would be winning 63.2% of your bets. Move that winning ATS streak up to at least 4 straight games and you are cashing your Under tickets 66.7% of the time.

How about if a team has covered the point spread in at least 4 or more of their last 6 contests and now they find themselves getting 10 or more points by the linesmaker? You do have a 56.8% winning bet on the big dog, but a much better money-maker is betting the Under in such games. With that wager you have a 70.5% winner, 31-13, over the past three seasons. Yeah, I’ll take a look at double-digit dogs.

A more basic trend involving double-digit dogs is if the lined total is 180 or lower, just play the Under and you have a 73.9% winner over the past three years.

This brings me to a point that really needs to be brought up. I don't like to go back very many years when using a specific totals range as scoring in the NBA has changed over the years. A totals range in the 170's was more prevalent five years ago than it is today. In 2003, there were 279 games during the regular season with a lined total in the 170's. Last year there were only 15 games with that low of total posted by the linesmakers. Looking at the other end, lined totals of 210 to 220, there were only three in all of the 2000-01 season. Last year there were 173.

Incidentally, 55.3% of those games with that total range last year went Over.

To the people who are immediately eliminating handicapping NBA games with double-digit dogs, shame on you. You are missing some very good betting opportunities by putting blinders on.

Jim Kruger is a basketball expert and is the main man for Vegas Sports Authority.

Methods to Improve your College Hoops Handicapping

College basketball is a sport that has more variance by teams from season to season than any other. You are dealing only with five players competing at one time against another team. One player can make a huge difference in a team’s results on a straight-up basis and also in covering the point spread. If you were a NCAA hoops fan in 1988, you will remember Danny and the Miracles winning it all for the University of Kansas. Can anyone name any of Danny Manning’s teammates?

It is never too early to start looking at a team’s characteristics and tendencies in college hoops. After all, you want to get on a team or find squads to bet against as early as possible when the point spreads and totals might not be entirely in line. Many of the teams you find to bet against will not be in the same form they were last year or not living up to expectations. And, obviously, just the opposite is true when looking for teams to put on your “play on list”. You can find line value on the surprise teams that everybody else hasn’t already spotted and you can find get extra points going against the disappointing teams.

Many times when a coach leaves a program, especially after a few good years, it seems the program takes a downturn, as if the outgoing coach knew the incoming and returning talent wasn’t going to be able to keep up with the success of prior campaigns. This appears to be the situation at Wichita State with Mark Turgeon leaving the wheat fields of Kansas for the Aggies of Texas A&M last year. WSU struggled with all types of bad luck last season even though they were able to hire a fine coach, Greg Marshall, with a very good track record. As head coach of Big South Winthrop, Marshall led his team to seven NCAA Tournament appearances in nine years. That is even more impressive when you realize this is a league that gets one invitation to the Big Dance.

Marshall has taken a diverse team of newbies and covered the spread three games in a row against quality competition including Georgetown and Michigan State. This is a team that was picked in the bottom three of the Missouri Valley Conference. Marshall is an excellent teacher and I expect WSU to outperform preseason predictions. They are currently sporting a 4-0 against the spread record and a team worth watching.

UNLV is a team that was picked to win the Mountain West and finish in the Top 25. A strong recruiting class was supposed to help the three returning starters, especially in the middle where the Rebels started 6-7 Joe Darger at center last year. Five-star recruit 7-0 Beas Hamga has seen virtually zero minutes as he is the epitome of a project. UNLV is counting on 3-point shots to fall as their lack of an inside presence has hurt them. The offense revolves around star guard Wink Adams. If he is not playing up to par, UNLV is an average team at best. The Rebels are 1-4-1 ATS even though they were picked to win the Mountain West Conference. UNLV dropped two games over the weekend with Adams going 5 for 25 from the field averaging 7.5 ppg.

In determining which teams to wager on, a statistic I like to look at is the difference in offensive field goal shooting and defensive shooting percentage. I have long maintained that good shooting teams are ones you want to look at to back against the point spread. Playing good defense only makes a team tougher to beat. Wake Forest is among leaders the nation in this category along with Arizona and Utah. Stew Morrill’s teams are always tough Utah State and they lead the country in shooting percentage at 56.6 percent. These are the types of teams I will look to play on as the season progresses.

Teams that are at the other end of the spectrum are Wright State, Louisiana-Monroe, Drexel, and UC-Irvine. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that a team that doesn’t shoot well and doesn’t defend well is not a good team to bet on. These are teams I put in my “play against” file.

Another statistical area I like to examine is a teams’ turnover differential. When you have many teams only taking 57 to 63 shots per game, a discrepancy in the number of net turnovers each team has can make a difference in the outcome of the game. Teams that have a very good differential include Louisville, Houston, Davidson, West Virginia, Missouri, and Nebraska. These teams also have a 14-6 ATS mark at the time of writing this article. Protecting the rock while being able to steal it are two qualities I want in teams I back.

I am always wary of putting my money on teams that shoot an extraordinary number of three-point goals relative to their two-point field goal attempts. If hoisting shots up from downtown is a team’s main method of offense, it can be a long day if the bombs are not going down. A bad shooting night can obviously happen, especially on the road away from the comforts and familiarity of your home gym. Teams rarely get to the free throw often when they are camping out behind the three-point arc which increases the reliance of making those 3’s.

Some good examples of teams shooting a relatively high number of 3’s and a low number of free throws are Iowa State, 14th out of 344 teams on three-point attempts, 326th on free-throw attempts. Troy is 22nd in TPA’s and 340th in FTA’s, Tennessee-Martin, 42nd and 324th, and Akron, 47th and 320th. Combined, these teams have a 3-11 ATS record. These will be teams I will avoid playing on and will be on my play against list when they are on the road.

On a side note, it is still too early to determine if moving the three-point line back a foot to 20’9” will make much of a difference. Currently there is a 1.2% reduction in the percentage of 3’s being made out of the 344 Division-1 teams, 33.2% this year compared to 34.4% last year. Teams overall are cutting back just a shade on the percentage of shots from behind the arc, 33.3% of all field goal attempts this year versus 34.4% last season.

These are some basic methods to start making a play on/against directory of teams. With so many lined teams, it is wise to have some methodologies to par your respective lists down.

Jim Kruger of Vegas Sports Authority contributed this article.

Betting College Hoops Non-Conference Action

The college basketball season has started with most teams already having played three or more games. For some sports bettors, the beginning of the college season presents as many challenges and unknowns as making heads or tails of who is going to win a match in the Czech Gambrinus Soccer League between FK Jablonec and AC Sparta Prague.

In traditional handicapping of college hoops, you first have to determine the players who have graduated and what they meant to their team, how many points, rebounds, etc. were they good for? Were they a leader, perhaps a defensive stopper? Did the offense revolve around them or did they create the offense themselves? Then you have to take into account the many freshmen, transfers, any change of coaches, injuries, and academic casualties a team has. How difficult was the travel for the visiting team? Is it as easy to travel to and from Valparaiso (wherever that is!) as it is to get to Duke?

The point is the average Joe the Bettor, let alone even many a professional handicapper, just doesn’t have the time to invest the due diligence required to have a good fundamental background on many NCAA basketball teams or leagues. Instead of trying to let you know about the highly touted freshman point guard at SMU who is teaming up with a quality front line, let’s take a look at some basic stuff that doesn’t require tremendous research and hopefully will help you be on the right side of more wagers than not.

There always is the pervasive belief that betting on underdogs is a higher percentage wager than betting on favorites. Well, not in non-conference college hoops overall. Since the beginning of the 2005 season, in over 3600 lined games, the favorite has covered the spread 51.6% of the time. Single-point favs did better than double-digit favorites beating the number in 52.8% of the games. Small favorites from pick’em to -2.5 were best at 53.9%.

Another common belief is to bet on home dogs and you can’t lose. In that same time frame, home teams getting points in non-conference games only cashed a ticket 46.4% of the time. So now that you have the facts, you don’t have to listen to “bookie crusher Bob” or that know-it-all bartender tell you that dogs cover 55% of the time. You can also throw the fact to them that away favorites of 3 to 9.5 points in non-con games since 2005 have topped the point spread at a 55.1% clip.

Okay, is there a way we can improve upon these poor winning percentages? Let’s add a qualifier or two into the equation. How do teams that won their last game and also beat the point spread do in their next match against a non-conference opponent? It is human nature to believe that a team in this situation would be a good bet in their next game. After all, they beat the linesmakers’ expectations, surely they must be a better team than people thought they were, aren’t they?

I’ve stopped using the now-ubiquitous phrase coined by ESPN college football analyst, Lee Corso, ever since a four-year old at my son’s pre-school barked at me “not so fast my friend” when I asked him if it was okay for Jim Jr. to play with his Hot Wheels Turbo Cars. So, just take my word, you should take a closer look before betting on a team off of a win and point-spread cover when they are playing a non-conference game.

The reason for taking a closer look is over the past three years teams put as a home dog in that situation are only 62-92 ATS, 40.3%. And, to tighten the trend down further, if that win and point spread cover came at home, the home dogs are only beating the number 36.8% of the time, 35-60. As a side note, those games are going Under the total 55.9% of the time.

You don’t run across many spots where you can find a blind 62.5% winning record that takes as much brain power to follow as it does to name who is buried in Grant’s Tomb. Well, maybe that is a trick question. Grant is in a mausoleum, and no one is buried in a mausoleum, the bodies are above ground. So let’s just get to the answer: Teams that won and covered the point spread on the road in non-conference action only cover the spread in their next game 37.5% of the time if they are pick’em to a 2.5 point dog. Since the line is so low, regardless if they are home or on the road, the chances are they are playing an equally talented team.

As a general rule of thumb, I like to keep track of how individual conferences do in a gambling perspective during non-conference action. Certain biases exist amongst the public on what conferences are stronger and do well against other conferences. This in turn helps shape the linesmakers’ opinions on where to make the number and where the number actually moves to.

There are some conferences where the results just flatly state what the quality of the conference is. The Ohio Valley Conference is the perfect example. Overall, in non-conference action, the OVC is 92-141 ATS, 39.5%. As an underdog it is slightly worse, 60-100, 37.5%. The not-so-sweet spot for OVC teams is as a 10 to 20.5 dog, 20-45 ATS, 30.8%. The point being, you better have a very good reason to bet on an Ohio Valley Conference team in non-league play unless you don’t mind helping your bookie make his mortgage payment.

Everybody likes the Big 10. The news of the day is you shouldn’t like them as a non-conference away underdog, 33-45, 42.3%. And if the line is pick’em to +2.5, how does 3-14 ATS sound? It’s not much better in that upper-range single digit dog, 5-14, getting 7 to 9.5 points.

How about a conference that does well, as a favorite or a dog, when they are playing out of their own neighborhood? Try the Missouri Valley Conference, 145-108 all non-con games. They actually do better as a favorite, 67-47, 58.8%, than as a dog. The MVC’s sweet spot is at home at pick’em to laying up to 2.5 points, 10-1 ATS since 2005.

And you always have to look at the wacky WAC for something out of the ordinary. Over the past three seasons, the Western Athletic Conference is a sad 46-67 ATS when installed as a home favorite playing teams not from the WAC. It gets worse if they are favored by 3 to 13.5 points, 29-50, 36.7%.

Follow these guidelines listed above and you should improve your winning percentage in college hoops non-conference action. Oh, incidentally, Josef, my friend from the Czech Republic told me to put my money on AC Sparta Prague. However, I don’t know if they won their previous match or how they do out of conference.

Jim Kruger of Vegas Sports Authority fashioned this piece.