There are Four Seasons of Betting in College Basketball
Welcome to our guide to betting on NCAA basketball. College basketball offers bettors innumerable opportunities to make money. This guide will give you all of the basics, including how to make standard and exotic wagers, methods you can use for sound money management and tips and strategies that will help make you a winner. We’ve even included a special section on March Madness, which is one of the most heavily wagered events of the year.
Use this guide as a solid foundation on which you can base your NCAA basketball betting enterprise. Sports betting is not about hunches or simply guessing; it involves in-depth analysis, solid knowledge regarding the game and an understanding of how betting works.
Betting on College Basketball is Different
Although we lump the college basketball season into an amalgam of games, there are actually four separate wagering seasons. This makes NCAA hoop a unique sport when it comes to betting. Of the six primary types sports in the U.S., only college basketball has four seasons. All the rest offer three.
We can break the college basketball seasons down in the following manner:
- Nonconference play.
- Conference play.
- Conference Tournaments.
- NCAA Championship Tournament (March Madness).
Each of these mini-seasons is unique when it comes to wagering. Let’s consider each one and how each differs from the others.
NCAA Basketball: Nonconference Play
Nonconference games occur prior to conference play and although they have little to do as to a team’s standing in their specific league, they have a lot to do with how a team is ranked nationally.
In betting on nonconference play, look for major mismatches. There will be plenty of them. A team will play around 12 nonconference contests. A major competitor from one of the top conferences, such as Syracuse from the Big East, will play teams such a Maine and Albany from the America East Conference. In those cases, you’re looking at 30 to 50 point wins for a club such as the Orange.
Seek out and exploit the major mismatches in nonconference play. They can payoff time and again if the point spread is good.
NCAA Basketball Conference Play
Conference play, which includes somewhere around 18 games, will also give you major mismatches. But conference play, for a few reasons, can be very tricky. First, you’re getting deeper into the season and even good teams can wear down. Second, teams within conferences know one another much better than those outside the conference. Even a bad team can make a game of it against a good one.
It’s best to get to know one or two of the major conferences really well such as the Pac-10 and Big East or the ACC and Big Ten or the Big 12 and SEC. Focus your wagering efforts on two leagues where you will have hundreds of games on which to bet, and if you’re doing well, then expand your efforts.
Conference Tournaments
Major conferences and mid-major conferences tend to have a tournament at the end of the season. The winner of that tournament usually gets a berth in the NCAA Tournament. Conference tournaments can be rife with unexpected outcomes. Teams that did well in the regular season may find themselves out in the first or second round. Bet on these carefully.
NCAA Championship Tournament
March Madness, which is also known as the Big Dance and the NCAA Championship Tournament, is not the only post-season game in town, but it is the most important. This is really an entirely different season that calls for huge amounts of number crunching, analysis and special attention to point spreads, as they can be killers. Although one and two seeds tend to do well, there are always those pesky schools that will destroy sure things by keeping a projected blowout close. Don’t take anything for granted during the aptly named March Madness.
Enjoy the Season!
The NCAA Basketball season starts in mid-November and runs until early April. Each of the over 100 teams plays an average of 30 games. That’s a lot of college basketball and a lot of betting opportunities. Enjoy the season, get to know the betting terrain, learn about the teams and wager wisely. You can take home some cold, hard cash.