The best way to handicap college basketball games is not to handicap college basketball games. There are thousands of people who are experts on many teams and even several conferences. In truth, you have no hope of competing with them. There are simply too many teams to follow. But with this system, you don't have to be an expert on each team, or for that matter, any team at all.
What you will need for this method are the point spreads of each team's last five games for both teams playing today. You will also need the results of the last five games for both teams. You will be looking at how well a team did against the spread and adding up the differences to get a total number for each…show more content… These are the major five college sports conferences: The Big Ten, The Big 12, ACC, SEC, PAC-12, along with the Big East and the American Athletic Conference. For a game to be a potential bet, both teams must be from the same conference or between conferences, but both teams must be from one of these seven conferences.
But what about the West Coast Conference? Gonzaga is a great team year after year. Perhaps so, but the conference is weak and not worth betting on. We only want to bet on high caliber teams from competitive conferences. You need look no further than the competition in the NCAA tournament to see which conferences produce the most competitive teams in the tournament. With the exception of the seven conferences mentioned. Gonzaga is an odd exception.
Of course, during the season there will also be an odd team here and there that will break into the top 25 rankings, but the conference they come from is inevitably weak. Many of the lesser conferences do have an automatic berth in the championship tournament, but they aren't likely to go deep into the tournament. Talent aside, they simply are not in a strong enough conference to prepare them for the high caliber of competition in the NCAA championship…show more content… Look at the point spread for today's game. If it is less than or equal to 9.5 points, it can be handicapped.
2) Calculate each team's variance from the spread of each of its last 5 games. You will compare the point spread for a particular game to the result of the game. A team will have done better than the spread (a positive number), worse than the spread (a negative number) or exactly the spread (zero). Add up these five numbers. Do this for both teams.
If both teams have negative numbers, the game does not qualify as a bet, go no further.
If one or both of the teams have a positive number, then calculate the Against the Spread figure.
3) the ATS figure is a measure of how well a team did against the spread in its last relative to the team it is playing today. This figure is for the game and not for the team. The number is calculated by taking each team's total for its variance from the spread in the last five games. If both teams have a positive number, then subtract the smaller number from the larger number and divide by 10. If one team has a positive number and the other a negative number, ignore the signs, add the two numbers together and divide by
