College basketball betting will reach an insane pitch this month with March Madness but you can avoid a trip to the asylum and maybe even make a few bucks by observing a few simple rules when wagering on the 2009 Men's Basketball Championship.
The "Big Dance," which tips off March 17, is different from the regular season in several fundamental ways, offering a unique set of challenges to the college basketball betting fan.
To that end, there are seven key handicapping and betting factors that help distinguish "March Madness" from the collegiate hardwood regular season:
Neighborhood Watch: Beware the team with the glitzy record that lives in the fancy neighborhood. Teams from tough zip codes, and, yes, we're talking about the Big East this season, are better prepared for the pressure and down-to-the-wire finishes of the Big Dance; after all, they've experienced nearly the same conditions in their own conference. Teams such as Connecticut, Pittsburgh, Louisville, Marquette and Villanova have been in or around the top 10 all year while other Big East outfits such as West Virginia, Syracuse, Notre Dame and Georgetown are anything but easy outs. The day-in, day-out battles that Big East teams endure will serve them well in the NCAA Tournament.
In Guard's Hands: Pressure, it's been said, including the overriding fear that one defeat ends a team's season, is the great equalizer in the NCAA Tournament so a team needs a point guard with the skills to withstand that tension.
Pittsburgh's Levance Fields, who leads the nation in assist-to-turnover ratio, certainly is a cool floor leader, as are Utah State's Tyler Newbold and North Carolina's Ty Lawson, who rank second and third, respectively, in college basketball assist-to-turnover ratio.
Three-Ring Circus: Teams that fall behind sometimes can get back in the game via the three-point shot. Among the leading quintets that can knock it down from beyond the arc and are, therefore, never really out of a game, are California, Xavier, UCLA, Arizona, Creighton, BYU and UtahState.
On the other sneaker, don't try mounting a three-point comeback against West Virginia, Illinois, WakeForest, Syracuse, Missouri, BYU or PennState. Those are some of the teams that play the best perimeter defense against the trey.
Whistle-Blowers: The Big Dance not only attracts the best teams in the land but the best officials as well so don't expect them to swallow their whistles at the end of the game. They'll call those fouls so if you bet on a team that can't get the job done from the line you could lose your bet at the free throw line.
Defense Department: Any team can have a cold day shooting the ball but it takes an outfit that plays an aggressive and challenging style of defense to overcome those scoring difficulties. Among the teams that play tough defense are Gonzaga, Connecticut, Memphis, Purdue, Kentucky, Butler, Kansas, Dayton, WakeForest and FloridaState. The "D" will keep you in the game.
Tempo: There's a racetrack saying that "pace makes race" but it might just as well apply to the NCAA Tournament where a gap in talent makes those style differences more important. Some teams like to run; others prefer a deliberate style of play. Some teams shoot a lot of treys while others feed the post, attack the rim and pick up points on the foul line. The team that wins the battle of tempo often is likely to also win the game. Determining which team will dictate the pace can help a bettor decide which team to bet.
Time: The old adage that bookmakers only have to be wrong once for bettors to take advantage of them was never truer than during the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. Once the Selection Committee announces the Tournament's pairings and brackets, price makers and bet takers only have about three hours to dispense 32 pointspreads and an equal number of totals to a wagering public that is eager to attack those numbers.
Given the time pressure and the inherent complexity involved in setting spreads for a number of obscure teams, sometimes errors can occur. The advantage for the player is that while bookmakers must post prices on every game, the gambler gets to pick his spots, choosing only the most advantageous matchups.
Pay attention to these seven factors and NCAA Basketball Tournament betting should be less of a mystery
