College Basketball Betting: “The Quicks” for March 2nd
Where the value lies on Sunday
Welcome back to “The Quicks” - our high-volume, micro-betting venture in college basketball betting! If you’re new, or need a refresher, here’s our angle as we hope to turn a possible edge into profitability for the rest of the CBB season.
Blood bath.
We’ll dig deeper into Saturday’s Red Wedding-level scene on THE WINDOW podcast on Monday, but… Damn.
Let’s take a peak at what it felt like, trying to find a game where our side parlayed a good first half into a strong close:
It’s amazing that of the 133 games on Saturday, half (66) of them were lined within a point of our projected number, and the other half that weren’t saw them lose in such a variety of ways - blown leads by big underdogs, pick’em games gone the wrong way, favorites with late leads that couldn’t push it over beyond the number, and everything in-between.
Don’t even get me started on Clemson (+4) losing by six in overtime at Virginia Tech in a game that will surely be featured on Scott Van Pelt’s next “Bad Beats” Sportscenter segment.
Even the most exciting finish of Saturday - Tennessee’s buzzer-beater - took away a chance for the Vols (-3.5) to even things out with a cover in overtime.
What can we attribute this to? With the way many of the games finish - luck. College basketball is the roulette wheel of sports betting. It’s fun to watch the ball bounce around, but there’s often little explanation for why the final result was what it was.
After all, the lines in college basketball - even ones we agreed with - are merely an educated guess. Even more notable, over 30 of Saturday’s games were won by 20+ points and almost all of those were lined in the single digits. Games expected to be tight weren’t even close (and vice versa). The variance in the sport may have never been higher.
Perhaps mercifully, this will be the last edition of The Quicks… this season… sorta.
For three weeks, we’ve bet (and lost) tiny, so that we could fully immerse ourselves into college basketball after the Super Bowl - learning lessons and educating ourselves about the teams along the way. Micro-betting - risking a quarter of our usual unit - was done so that each game didn’t hold the same import as when elimination is on the table.
With the first of the conference tournaments starting Sunday, and the calendar officially turned to March, we can tighten up our betting cards a little bit and handicap game using more than what amounted to a little better than a weighted coin flip.
We’ll still use our projections to help us beat the betting market to a good number, but as we get into the do-or-die portion of the season, largely on neutral courts, there’s more nuance - matchups, star players tabbed with getting big buckets, game-planning and, with little rest, depth.
But first, there’s a Sunday’s worth of games to look at. Of the 23 on the board, eight matchups are lined right on our projections. The 15 differences are listed below.
For a refresher on how we hope to find an edge in betting college basketball, click here.
Sunday, March 2nd
Yesterday: 24-41-2
Season: 278-283-6
*Conference tournament game played at campus site
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