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November 2002
Take away the poorly dressed, sweat-drenched coaches and the relatively ink-free, pimpled face players who have yet to sign their first million dollar contracts and college basketball, which tips off its 2002/2003 season this month, isn't all that different from the NBA brand of hoops.
Of course, that assessment changes dramatically if you're a bookmaker or a bettor. In practice, there are a number of elements that have lesser or no degree of impact on the NBA which are essential to the handicapping, betting and bookmaking processes in college basketball.
Let's look at some of them:
Numbers game: Competition all but mandates that bookmakers post prices on over 200 teams (as compared to 29 NBA clubs), providing the gambler with many more options. For bettors, it's a lot easier to find a bad number among 100 games than it is to find one among 13 or 14.
Home court: Sure this is a factor in NBA play but it's more often the tiring travel involved in getting to an away game that puts the road team at a disadvantage in the pro ranks. For that reason, NBA spreads are affected more by schedule than by the actual home court.
Since teams play only about 30 games a year, lengthy road trips aren't a factor in college play. Nevertheless, with its requisite contingent of chanting and sign-waving students, the home court really does count in college hoops. In fact, the home court can be such an advantage in college basketball that there may be as much as a 10-point swing in the pointspread in a home-and-home series. Traditionally, there are certain venues - Duke, Kentucky and New Mexico come to mind - where visitors find it very difficult to win. Conversely, what distinguishes the top teams from the rest of the pack is their ability to succeed on the road.
Morale: A shorter schedule and more heated rivalries, particularly within conferences or states, all but guarantees that emotion will play a greater role in college basketball than it does in the NBA. For that reason, assessing a team's motivation can be a crucial factor.
Revenge: Another factor unique to college basketball is revenge. A team that lost to an opponent once is likely to be more troublesome to tame the second time around. This is a scenario that plays itself out in conference play, where splits are more common than sweeps.
Freshmen: Time was that first year recruits sat on the pine and waited their turn. Nowadays, if you're good enough to play, coaches let you. A good example was Duke's Jason Williams, who started at pointguard as a freshman for the Blue Devils, averaging 14.5 points and 6.5 assists per game during the 1999/2000 season.
Interestingly, the emergence of freshmen as contributors has required bookmakers and bettors to track the careers of high school seniors, monitoring their college choices and assessing the impact they may have on those programs.
Since no sport is more affected by a single player than basketball, every new addition - freshman, junior college or transfer - has the opportunity to alter the dynamic of the game.
Three-for-all: Further complicating the oddsmaking and betting equation is that college basketball is much more like a three-act play than a seamless season. Act I runs through the end of the year when teams play most of their non-conference games. For some, this is a time for experimenting with different lineups and strategies, growing pains that usually are reflected by the pointspread. Other outfits, ones with experienced players, have an obvious advantage in cohesiveness. After all, basketball is a team sport.
Act II starts with the tip-off of the conference schedule, which begins in January. Teams have worked out the kinks by now and, for the most part, are ready to face a series of opponents with whom they have some familiarity. The teams may play each other two or three times a year - twice in conference and perhaps again in the league's tournament - and coaches know each other and their preferred style of play. There are few surprises and, except for those occasions when the very best teams are playing the very worst teams, close games are common.
For the fortunate, the curtain will rise for Act III, the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, in March. It is the unpredictable nature of the "Big Dance," the convergence of teams that have as much in common as Rick Majerus and hair spray, which makes "March Madness" the oddsmaking and wagering challenge that it is.
Because of its uniqueness, bet makers and bet takers approach the tournament both respectful and wary of an entirely different set of factors that rarely come into play during college basketball's regular season. We'll take a look at those four elements next spring.
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