College Basketball Betting Systems

College sports attract a kind of atmosphere not often seen in the professional ranks. This is especially true in college basketball, where the passion of the home crowd often has as much to do with who wins or loses as the relative talent level of the two teams playing.

Of course, this level of excitement and passion also leads plenty of people to bet on college basketball. Over time, gamblers have created a number of rather successful systems that can point you in the right direction when it comes to making smarter picks. Here’s a sampling of some of the most popular and successful college basketball betting systems.

Unranked Favorites

One popular system that has shown promising results relies greatly on the passion we mentioned above. In this system, gamblers are instructed to bet on unranked teams who are playing at home as favorites against ranked teams. While this might seem overly simplistic, it turns out that this system actually has a fairly high rate of success over the years!

The logic behind the system feels pretty sound. Unranked teams that are on the cusp of entering the top 25 are likely to get up for a showdown with a ranked team in front of their home fans. Perhaps even more importantly, the fact that they’re favored over a ranked team suggests that they’re probably the better team; the public generally relies too heavily on poll rankings, and the lines set by the bookmakers also show a slight bias in this direction because of it. If an unranked team is respected enough to be favored over a ranked team despite this bias, they definitely deserve attention. It’s worth noting that in recent years, this system has been somewhat less successful, but that doesn’t mean you should dismiss the system.

Some bettors also use a secondary system based off of this one. This one is even simpler: if a team wins when you bet on them using the above system, just bet against them in the next game, as they’re likely due for a letdown after their big win.

Betting Against the Public

Another popular system attempts to find spots where the public is on one side of a bet, and get on the other side. Fading the public is often a decent general strategy; sharp bettors often find spots where casual gamblers have put money on the wrong side of a line, pushing the line even farther in their favor to make their play an even better wager.

Some systems attempt to define exactly when you should bet against the public. For instance, many online sportsbooks will tell you what percentage of bets have come in on each side of a gamble. One system that uses this information suggests betting on any underdog of more than 10 points that has gotten less than 40% of the action in a given game. This system is quite successful, especially during the conference tournaments and NCAA tournament.

How to Use College Basketball Betting Systems

The best way to use a system isn’t to use it religiously. Sure, that might work out, and it may even show a profit in the long run, but you won’t maximize your returns by sticking to a simple formula. You should use systems like the ones above simply to find promising looking bets. After you isolate bets that might work out for you, then it’s time to research those games. If your research confirms that what the system pointed out is indeed a good bet, that’s when it’s time to make the wager.