College Basketball Bets
One of the more recent developments in the sports betting world is having every conference lined for the college basketball regular season. Within the last 10 years, the “Extra Games” or “Added Board” has been a daily occurrence as opposed to something that only happened during the conference tournament. Conferences like the MEAC and SWAC weren’t available to bettors on a regular basis.
Well, that isn’t the case anymore and hasn’t been for a while, which is good because that’s all we have on the slate tonight. All of tonight’s games are from the SWAC, MEAC, Patriot League, and Southland Conference, so there are a lot of teams that the average bettor is not remotely familiar with handicapping.
One thing to keep in mind about these teams is that many of them play grueling, miserable, long road trips against superior opponents throughout November and December to fund the athletic department with paycheck games. As a result, you will see a lot of these teams with awful records and even worse season-long statistics. It is very crucial to put everything in the proper context to fairly assess teams like this.
For more college basketball best bets today, check out Greg Peterson’s daily article and Tyler Shoemaker’s TSI Projections/Best Bets on weekdays.
As always, I want to give a shout-out to Bart Torvik (BartTorvik.com), Erik Haslam (Haslametrics.com), and KenPom, as they provide a lot of great data.
This season, we’ve also connected with CBBAnalytics.com to access their data and I’ll be working that into my article. Use promo code VSIN for $30 off at CBB Analytics and find your betting edge.
This article will run Monday-Saturday. Lines will be from DraftKings, as they are widely available to readers. Shop around for the best prices.
Check the latest college basketball odds for legal U.S. sportsbooks across the country and our Vegas odds if you share a state with us here at VSiN. Also, give the college basketball betting splits (DraftKings) and Circa CBB Betting Splits a look for these or any other college basketball games today have your interest.
Odds from DraftKings Sportsbook at time of publish.
Arkansas-Pine Bluff Golden Lions at Prairie View A&M Panthers (-3.5, 166.5)
7 p.m. ET
There are 17 games on the card today and I have to be honest…it’s a rough slate. Nothing against these conferences, but after getting pummeled for two months, we’ve seen a lot of inconsistent performances, even in conference play. Fortunately, Torvik’s website allows you to look specifically at stats against teams that are greater than/equal to or less than/equal to from a quadrant standpoint.
So, what I did for this game was use his number to look at the performances for these two teams against Quadrant 3 or worse opponents. In those types of games, Arkansas-Pine Bluff has been the better team by a decent margin. Prairie View A&M may end up with a turnover advantage here and that could be tough to overcome, but the Golden Lions are better in eFG% offense and defense, ORB% and DRB%, and significantly better in 3P% over a sample size of seven games for each team.
The Panthers are only shooting a 3 on 28.1% of their shot attempts in these Q3 or lower games. Not only that, but they’re only shooting 31% on them, while APB is shooting a 3-pointer on 35.1% of shot attempts with a 35.9% success rate. In a game that should be very up-tempo with a lot of possessions, the Golden Lions have the opportunity to score more often in 3s than their opponents.
It should also be noted that Arkansas-Pine Bluff is shooting 78.1% at the free throw line for the season as a whole. Given that they’ve played in some hostile environments and much larger areas than their home barn or other venues in the SWAC, I think that’s a very impressive accomplishment. Meanwhile, Prairie View A&M’s best free throw shooter, Dontae Horne, only played 11 minutes against Mississippi Valley State last time out and it wasn’t due to foul trouble.
I couldn’t find anything definitive as to whether or not Horne would be out or what he’s dealing with, but either way, I like the metrics for Arkansas-Pine Bluff in these types of games. When adjusted for games against Quad 3 or lower opponents, Torvik has this one lined as Prairie View A&M -0.1.
Pick: Arkansas-Pine Bluff +3.5 (-115)
