College Basketball Handicapping Articles

Expert College Basketball Betting Advice: How to Bet Early-Season Games
by Trevor Whenham - 11/10/2017

College basketball season is here. Finally. Starting Friday and stretching into April we will have an incredible number of games every week. I love it - as a fan and especially as a bettor. There are so many games where you can find betting opportunities no matter what you like. Big games? Check. Way, way off-the-radar conferences? Check. High-profile stars? Sure. Solid role players? Lots of them. The college basketball season is like one of those massive buffets in Vegas - it has everything anyone could want, and it doesn't matter if you want different things than most others.

2017 SEC College Basketball Predictions with Conference Odds and Betting Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 11/1/2017

For the past two seasons SEC brass have been touting their schools' coaching hires and pushing the narrative that the league is on the rise. The results have been mixed. Last season the SEC finished the year as the No. 5-rated league in the country just one season after finishing No. 6. The SEC hasn't been in the Top 4 since 2012, with a low point in 2013 when they finished the year rated No. 7, behind the Pac-12 and the Mountain West.

2017 Pac-12 College Basketball Predictions with Conference Odds and Betting Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 10/31/2017

While this Pac-12 basketball season will serve as a rebuilding season for most of the top programs in the league, there is one that will be experiencing a Renaissance. USC has been under renovation for several seasons, and now Andy Enfield is ready to watch the Trojan wreck shop along the West Coast and challenge Arizona for league supremacy.

2017 Big Ten College Basketball Predictions with Conference Odds and Betting Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 10/30/2017

Big Ten basketball is usually one of the most popular arenas for college basketball bettors to ply their trades each season. The combination of well-known programs, nationally-televised games, and ample line value has made this conference, after the ACC, one of the most wagered on leagues in the country each winter.

2017 Big 12 College Basketball Predictions with Conference Odds and Betting Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 10/30/2017

Gravity. The sun rising in the east. Kansas winning the Big 12 Championship. It is nice that in a chaotic world there is still some semblance of certainty. And Kansas provides that by continually dominating one of the best conferences in college basketball. This isn't Kentucky owning the feeble SEC or Gonzaga crushing the comical WCC. Kansas is playing in a league that routinely sends at least half of its members to the NCAA Tournament, and the Jayhawks often leave little doubt as to who is the dominating force in Midwest hoops.

2017 Big East College Basketball Predictions with Conference Odds and Betting Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 10/27/2017

In terms of college basketball handicapping, the Big East Conference is one of the most difficult in the sport to make picks and predictions for. And the reason is simple: these teams are all really, really good. Much like the Big 12, the smaller size of the Big East (10 teams) compared to leagues like the ACC (15), Big Ten (14) and SEC (14) means that there are fewer "tiers", less bottom feeders and easy wins, and thus more parity throughout the league.

2017 ACC College Basketball Predictions with Conference Odds and Betting Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 10/27/2017

There's a dark cloud hanging over ACC basketball this season. The FBI's investigation into college athletics and illegal bribery has already claimed a Hall of Fame coach and threatens to expand beyond the two programs, Louisville and Miami, that it has already engulfed. Add in the controversy surrounding the North Carolina program and there is a lot of lingering cynicism around this league as we head into the season.

2017 Atlantic 10 College Basketball Predictions with Conference Odds and Betting Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 10/25/2017

Over the past five years the Atlantic 10 Conference has surpassed the Mountain West as the best mid-major basketball league in the country. The Atlantic 10 has sent at least three teams to the NCAA Tournament for 10 straight years, including back-to-back seasons with five teams in The Big Dance in 2013 and 2014. And while the A-10 will be hard-pressed to match their now expected three bids this season, there are still a lot of excellent players and coaches toiling in this oft-overlooked conference.

2017 AAC College Basketball Predictions with Conference Odds and Betting Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 10/25/2017

The American Athletic Conference, the afterbirth of the Great Conference Realignment earlier this decade, continues to be a sloppy hodgepodge of college basketball programs. Well-regarded powerhouses like Connecticut and Cincinnati, respected programs like Temple and Memphis, and upstarts like SMU, Tulsa and Houston have been sharing the court with bottom-feeders like Tulane, East Carolina and South Florida since the league's inception in 2013.

Robert Ferringo College Basketball Betting: 10 Years Of Dominance
by Robert Ferringo - 10/16/2017

Anyone that has ever gambled on sports can tell you that certainty is an illusion. It's a myth. The Legend of The Sure Thing. All manner of chaos exists in the mathematics of both sports and betting. And the reality is that death and taxes are still the only certainties in life.

2018 NCAA Basketball National Championship Odds and Expert Betting Predictions
by Trevor Whenham - 4/5/2017

As I write this we are still less than 24 hours away from that truly awful NCAA Tournament Championship Game, Both teams conspired with the refs to make it mostly unwatchable - and not just because my team lost. I don't want to spend any more time than I absolutely have to thinking back to that game - or the rest of what was a pretty flat tournament overall, really. Instead, this is a good time to look forward - and to hope that next year's tournament offers a better finale and a better overall event.

NCAA Basketball Expert Predictions: Three Interesting March 18 Opening Lines
by Alan Matthews - 3/17/2017

Not a very interesting Thursday of the NCAA Tournament as it was almost completely chalk. The only big "upset" was Middle Tennessee beating Minnesota to keep the No. 12 over No. 5 first-round trend going, but the Blue Raiders were also slight favorites. I recommended them, by the way. I was also correct on Iowa State -6 over Nevada but missed on Vanderbilt -1 over Northwestern. More on that below. Even though the favorites dominated straight up, the underdogs had a huge day against the spread -- killing the sportsbooks in that regard. Neither No. 1 seed on Thursday (Gonzaga, Villanova) covered a big number.

NCAA Basketball Expert Predictions: Three Interesting March 16 Opening Lines
by Alan Matthews - 3/15/2017

Thursday brings one of the best sports days of the year, especially for someone who works at home as I do. It's wall-to-wall hoops - and something to have on as background noise during the day other than wall-to-wall gas bags Stephen Smith or Colin Cowherd. True, it's also one of the most distracting days of the year work-wise, but I'm happy for the trade-off. My Final Four picks are: Duke in the East, West Virginia in the West, Kansas in the Midwest and North Carolina in the ridiculously-stacked South.

2017 Pac-12 Conference Tournament Predictions with College Basketball Betting Odds
by Robert Ferringo - 3/8/2017

Oregon, Arizona and UCLA give Bill Walton's "conference of champions" a legitimate shot at one in the NCAA Tournament. But first things first. And this league, which had just one game separate those three powerhouse programs this year, will need to crown a conference champion.

2017 Big East Conference Tournament Predictions with College Basketball Betting Odds
by Robert Ferringo - 3/8/2017

With all the change that the Big East has undergone this decade it is nice to know that some things about this league will never die. And holding its conference tournament at Basketball Mecca is one of them. The Big East Tournament will take place at Madison Square Garden in New York this week and here is Doc's Sports 2017 Big East Conference Tournament preview.

NCAA Basketball Expert Predictions: Three Interesting March 8 Opening Lines
by Alan Matthews - 3/7/2017

If you are so inclined, you can now bet on the University of Hawaii to win the Big West Tournament title - it is +775 to do so at 5Dimes. Over the weekend, the NCAA made the surprising decision to allow the Rainbow Warriors to play postseason basketball as the school won an appeal. The NCAA originally announced that Hawaii was banned for postseason play this year back in 2015 - taking the unusual stance of not forcing Hawaii to serve the postseason ban in 2016.

NCAA Basketball Conference Tournament Betting: High Seeds Not to Trust
by Trevor Whenham - 3/7/2017

The regular season in college basketball has come to an end. That must mean it's March. The eyes of the media and the casual betting public are looking ahead to the NCAA Tournament, but of course we have conference tournaments to play before we get there. Here we are going to look at six teams from six different conferences. Each one is secure in their NCAA Tournament spot regardless of how the conference tournaments go. Beyond that they also have one other thing in common - I don't trust any of them as much as their ranking or public reputation or conference tournament seeding would suggest I should.

2017 Atlantic 10 Conference Tournament Predictions with College Basketball Betting Odds
by Robert Ferringo - 3/6/2017

I'm not exactly sure when it happened, but the Atlantic 10 has become the No. 1 mid-major conference in the country. And unless St. Mary's makes the field out of the WCC then this appears to be the only non-major conference set to receive multiple bids to the NCAA Tournament.

NCAA Basketball Expert Predictions: Three Interesting March 7 Opening Lines
by Alan Matthews - 3/6/2017

The first but definitely not last major coaching domino post-regular season has fallen as Missouri, to no surprise, fired Mike Anderson. The school technically "forced him to resign" but will let him coach the Tigers in the Big 12 Tournament - they figure to lose Wednesday vs. Auburn. Anderson went 9-23 in his first season at Missouri, 10-21 in his second and is 7-23 in his third. He's 8-46 in SEC games.

NCAA Basketball Expert Predictions: Three Interesting March 4 Opening Lines
by Alan Matthews - 3/3/2017

It's my final 3-Point Play of the 2016-17 college basketball regular season, although I will go into the postseason as long as possible - usually to the Final Four (although perhaps not daily). Don't forget there are also a couple of other postseason tournaments other than the Big Dance. You can probably expect odds on the National Player of the Year at the various sportsbooks on Monday after the regular season concludes. It's probably a three-man race between Villanova's Josh Hart, Kansas' Frank Mason III and Purdue's Caleb Swanigan. I'm not sure Purdue is good enough for Swanigan to win it. Mason was the slight favorite on Bovada's most recent odds, and with KU the No. 1 team in the nation he's probably the guy to back.