Live-Betting the O/U in NCAA Basketball: A Skill-Based System for Winning Picks

There are too many scenes from old sports books swirling around in my head constantly, so please go easy if I get this one wrong at all.

According to reputable sources, Mark Messier – an NHL hockey legend, not a cager, but we’ll get to basketball soon enough – was observed in his playing days counseling teammates against giving an opponent bulletin-board material or doing “anything to help motivate them” to play harder.

All coaches and captains tell athletes not to indulge in trashy tabloid publicity or braggadocio. But the latter half of Messier’s maxim has always puzzled me. Did the New York icon really want to play against unmotivated foes, beating everybody without taking their best shot?

It’s a trick question. The mental game – the “want-to” of athletes – is as much a part of the battle as physical training. Lulling opponents into a false sense of security can be just as valuable as getting your own teammates focused and hyped-up. Imagine if Messier’s (and Wayne Gretzky’s) Edmonton Oilers had marched into every rink beating their chests and sneering at the crowd. Teams would have sacrificed games against other clubs just to make sure they got a piece of The Great One.

I find that principles from the sports world can be applied to the sports-gambling world. For instance, many of the puzzles facing the online bettor are themselves trick questions. And the sportsbook really does want its clients to be lulled into a false sense of security.

Betting systems abound on the internet. Many of them really do work. Except just because a system beats the sportsbook doesn’t mean it works for the gambler.

A Live-Betting System for Pleasure and Profit

How do you define “success” when gambling at a sportsbook?

Suppose a guy really, really wants to beat the bookie, and dives into fanatical research on everything from March Madness to the English Premier League. He “succeeds,” winning 58% of his bets including some underdog moneylines and parlays, and makes a few hundred bucks a week at the book.

Problem is, the huge time-commitment works to the detriment to his job performance. He winds up taking a demotion and loses the weekly income he gained from the markets.

Then he says, “I know what to do. I’ll just gamble on my favorite teams that I’m already gonna watch anyway. Then I can do better at work, and still bet and win!” Nope. Lulled to sleep against recognizing his own disadvantage (sound familiar?) when betting with alma mater-colored glasses, he loses another several hundred bucks on the hometown heroes.

Finally, at wit’s end, he pursues a “scientific” and secretive gambling system through some handy identity-masking work and an open-source exchange market in the U.K. He learns from an old-timer that “laying” (or betting an anything-but outcome) every road favorite in every Italian club soccer match from now until the end of time will lead to 55% success. So he does it, and he makes his money back. Except the games kick-off at 5 in the morning, he’s losing sleep from the Android alerts, and our protagonist’s fate becomes that of a file clerk on a tiny salary instead of a cheering sports fan.

Whatever you call that, it isn’t success.

A successful betting system is one that promises the gambler a real sporting interest and a minimal time-commitment. Gamblers must be allowed to have fun. If you can’t place a bet on the Super Bowl or a UFC fight with your pals just for the heck of it, then the sportsbook has robbed you getting to cheer for an outcome in a popular sport…one of the main reasons people bet in the first place.

When losses on “fun” bets occur, a system is handy to refresh that stake. Some people like to wager the Under in NFL games near the end of a season. That paid off pretty well this time around, though it’s as seasonal as anything else. Some people dive deeply into Major League Baseball and make a science out of 5-Innings bets. But the 162-game format just screams “time commitment,” not to mention the profound handicapping-and-memorization duties facing anyone who gambles on MLB games.

My personal favorite method of quick stake-upping is live-betting NCAA basketball.

Here Be Dragons (And Zags, and Blue Devils)

One reason college hoops in-plays could be an overlooked market is that we all know how fraught with danger the moneylines can be.

Live moneylines are weighted highly toward the house (not just in basketball) since computer algorithms can be fooled on outcomes and there’s no human resources available to constantly re-forecast and re-price every game on a Friday night.

But the ML and the spread aren’t the only live CBB odds available on the World Wide Web.

One night early in the 2018-19 season, I was looking over the live odds at MyBookie when I noticed that the Alabama Crimson Tide’s contest looked awful funny on the O/U. In a relatively high-scoring game against an overmatched mid-major (Bethune-Cookman, maybe, or SFA) the score sat in 65-50 range with 10 minutes to go.

The live Over/Under was going into a (160 ½) total-points peak. That meant that in-play gamblers were expecting the teams to score at least 4 points per minute over the final 10:00 of the battle.

The first thing to know about a 4-points-per-minute scoring pace is that it is an NBA-level rate of scoring. If a pair of NBA squads play to a 96-96 tie and wind up in a 115-107 OT finish, nobody tends to say “gee, what a low-scoring game.”

NBA clubs, of course, operate with a :24 shot clock. College teams get :30 to shoot and often prefer to kick-out and reset following offensive rebounds. Therefore, assuming that they’ll score 4 points per minute is giving the student-athletes credit for being more efficient with the rock than NBA studs, or at least an inditement of all college defenders at once.

I like college basketball, and didn’t see 2 dead defenses patrolling the court in the ‘Bama game. So I bet the Under, even though it was a trademark (-17) vig instead of the usual 10% to the house. The teams went cold from the field for minutes at a time. I won, and it felt sort of easy.

Since then I’ve been taking time-out at a few points each week to live-bet college cagers on the Over/Under – marquee teams and unknowns too. There have been marvelous streaks of winning, and a few setbacks. But I’ve learned 3 important things about the system I invented by accident.

It’s not very time-consuming. College basketball games tend to go by quickly, especially compared to the endless T/O tactics of the final 5:00 in an NBA contest.

It is a hobby of skill, not necessarily of hours spent preparing and handicapping teams. It’s nice to know the talent on the court inside and out. But you don’t have to know the squads that well to successfully handicap a game you’ve already watched for over an hour.

The stats and performances of each student-athlete on-screen in front of you? Those provide the best information you could ask for, and it only involves viewing the game. Eye in the sky, as they say.

Finally, the system is reliable. You might win a lot with it, or you might tread water, but it would be hard to crash a stake with CBB in-plays unless you like to drink heavily during March Madness.

The Basics of Shooting % Reversion

Teams can only score by shooting. Even a dunk is a shot. It’s very difficult for a Division 1 team to reach 50% shooting, and some of them barely get above 50% even if you count free throws.

But when a squad gets hot from downtown, the live-betting public seems to often believe that the shots will keep right on falling. That’s an affront to mathematics, and usually a bad assessment.

All it does is drive up the O/U line and invite a high-% pick on the low side.

In-play bettors can be found making the same mistake in NCAA hardwood O/U total betting as when taking the “Over” far too often late in the NFL year. In their hunt for a “recreational” wager that is fun to cheer for, they’re imagining a sustained NBA-level scoring pace from college kids all too often.

Think of the final point total in a contest as a flat line running across a timeline from opening tip to the final buzzer. However the schools’ pace of scoring fluctuates, the final total will always be what it’s going to be. Then imagine a wavy line curling all around it and winding up at the same height on the right-hand margin representing the end of the game. That line shows how the pace of scoring – the likely outcome as would be determined by an impartial computer (not a computer designed to follow the betting action and set prices, as a sportsbook does).

Finally, imagine a super-wavy line going wildly up and down, above and below the other 2 lines. That line is most-likely to represent the O/U number throughout the course of live-betting a basketball contest. People see the cold spells and the hot-streaks and imagine they will continue throughout the course of a game.

The gambling public loves to anticipate scoring, particularly as the point total climbs late in the 1st half or early in the 2nd half. Bettors will often overlook factors such as foul trouble, substitutions, defense-oriented coaching, and shooting-% reversion when driving up the live O/U total.

Skillfully-timed “under” bets can slay the book if you learn to identify a peak in the O/U. The highest O/U line rarely nails or underestimates the final score of an NCAA game – the final score is almost always below the number, just as it’s almost always above the lowest number forced on the betting site by the action at the fans’ most pessimistic moment. Find the peak – often early in the 2^nd-half of a seemingly hot-scoring contest – and it’s nearly impossible to lose on the low side.

Get Over the Anti-Under Psychology

Many may think it offensive to call this the “grow up” step of college basketball live betting, but that’s exactly what it is. Learn that it doesn’t have to be a bummer – or a foot in the graveyard – to be the guy cheering for good defense.

It’s like the insurance commercial where people are morphing into their parents, and a man says “the next thing you know, I’ll be saying ‘defense wins championships’” followed by the lady next to him saying, “Well, it does!”

As you become older and wiser you tend to appreciate a good defense more. But it’s not about hating the offenses or the scorers. But the flow of the game is better when the D isn’t porous. It becomes monotonous to see a dunk every 10 seconds.

Why was pro wrestling more popular with grown-ups once upon a time? Probably because the old-time grapplers would build up tension for weeks prior to a main-event match, and finally brawl in some kind of half-realistic way. In present-day a wrestling match has to be fought in fast-forward or the targeted 12 and 13-year-old boys will become bored and change the channel. Adults don’t see wrestling on TV any more, just hyper-kinetic action dolls and acrobats.

Them: Wrestling is stupid.

Me, an intellectual: False.

pic.twitter.com/d3h0FdqjMU

— Andrew Hammond (@ahammTNT) May 25, 2018

I think I can speak for most – ahem – maturing hoops fans when I say a suspenseful 72-70 result between UVA and Duke is much more exhilarating than watching 2 NBA squads with virtually no defense score a combined 300 points on each other at warp speed. It becomes tedious after a while.

It is, of course, fun to cheer for points and swishes from beyond the arc. But let it go. There’s money to be made siding with the defense.

When Not to Get Over It

By the same token, the live-betting public’s love affair with offense leads to a different syndrome in the early chunk of the 1^st half. When a pair of average opponents are ice-cold from the field in the early-going, and coaches are content to allow long half-court possessions instead of trying to force the issue on the attack, then the O/U will sometimes shrink as low as (110 ½) or (105 ½) on behalf of disgusted point-scoring speculators. 105 total points means a final score such as 60-45 or 55-50, and most squads are going to find a way to get above such a pessimistic forecast despite a mediocre start.

Consider that very early in the game:

• Shooters are still getting a feel for the atmosphere and their own biorhythms
• None of the best interior defenders are in foul trouble
• Fouls often don’t send players to the charity stripe
• Coaches are still trying to read each other; long, methodical possessions aid the chalkboard
• Neither team is likely to have fallen behind by 10 or 20 points

A competitive regular-season tip-off between athletic schools in the Big Ten, for instance, is likely to overcome a cold start and a 30-21 halftime score to produce 115+ points. Fouls will likely pile-up as players drive and go to the line, and shooting is likely to revert back to the average for both teams.

Those factors give Over bettors a distinct advantage, especially when they time a live-bet to the “valley” of the moving O/U line during the contest.

Of course, betting the Over means that you get to cheer for the forwards to drive and the guards to make 3s. That’s a nice bonus, but the wagers still tend to work.

I spent an afternoon and an evening making a few live CBB bets during the D1 regular season, as a case-study for this tutorial. Going through how each game was treated by the live-betting market and how its outcome wound up, we can touch on a good many of the crucial keys to successful O/U in-plays.

After that, we’ll touch on live-betting O/U strategy in March Madness and elsewhere in the postseason (the sciences are very similar) and look at how bettors can combat the ugly house % taken on your live bets.

A Day in the Life of the System

The Tennessee-LSU game on February 23^rd was my first gamble of the day and a hard lesson about a pitfall of O/U hoops betting.

The battle of ranked SEC contenders went to OT, which is the bane of all “under” bettors forever. You almost never win a low-side O/U wager when the squads get another 5 minutes to play.

Overtime, of course, rescues plenty of “over” picks. The Vols and Tigers had a hot scoring start, racking up 40+ points in the first 10:00 minutes of the 1^st half. The live O/U shot to (161 ½).

I took the Under of course, and soon the contest slowed down. In fact, by the end my only concern was that it might go to overtime. The score was tied 69-69 with a minute left. No more worry about the O/U line itself – referees had helped by calling for endless reviews, causing both sides to become anxious and out-of-kilter with the basketball.

Except it was a double-edged sword. The refs kept it up, and by the end, even Dick Vitale was in a bad mood. “Take a little longer please!” he told the officials on the air. Both squads were frigid, and the game did go to OT tied at the same score.

Bettors had over-estimated LSU and Tennessee’s scoring punch to the point where even the overtime frame nearly fell short of the “peak” O/U total – the Tigers prevailed in Baton Rouge thanks to freshman guard Ja’vonte Smart’s 29-point performance.

Moral #1: Try to avoid tightly-matched emotional contests when taking the live Under.

Navy vs Colgate provided a logical follow-up bet. Colgate out-matches Navy, but the Middies have a few aggressive, athletic backcourt players, and fair shooting most of the time.

Still, when the “peak” of the O/U rose to (165 ½) there was no passing up the low side. Navy got hot briefly in mid-game, causing the quick over-reaction from O/U bettors. But the Raider defense grew stubborn as the service academy could not run-n’-gun for more than an ordinary number of points, and the final score was 93-71 for a winning bet slip despite the Toothbrushes, I mean the Raiders making all kinds of bombs in the 2^nd half.

The Midshipmen appear to be a strange mix of traditional service-academy hoops talent – think stocky, square-bodied kids who pass and shoot – and smaller “downhill” guards and forwards. At the same time, their senior point guard Hasan Abdullah is a big man who plays downhill, making him the odd-one-out on a mishmash of a roster.

The coaching trend of ballers being allowed to “play downhill” is not as much of a curse on the “under” as you might imagine, assuming you time your live bet to when the teams are rocking and rolling and driving up the O/U line with fast breaks. At some point, things have to slow down, and if “hero ball” could rack up as many points as half-court shooting and teamwork and easy buckets off good defense, then there would be one heck of a short-cut to March Madness glory.

Moral #2: Freshen your stake by live-betting on minty defense from teams like Colgate. But not against other sparkle-shiny contenders who could take the Raiders to OT or into an extended foul-a-thon.

Finally, it was time for a win on the Over. UNLV had issues scoring in the 1^st half against San Diego State, falling behind 31-23 and driving the O/U in-play down to (114 ½). Hailing from San Diego myself and having watched the Mountain West on the hardcourt for years, I knew that total was too low.

The Runnin’ Rebels surged in the 2^nd half and nearly won as imposing teenager Cheikh Mbacke Diong posted an amazing 15 rebounds. The final score was 60-59, beating the line on the wager by 4 ½ points.

Moral #3: There’s no substitute for basketball knowledge in any style of hoops betting, but a basic understanding of how programs, conferences, and home-court advantages tend to play-out is just as valuable as specific beads on individual scorers and defenders.

Adapting the System to March Madness

Thankfully, teams go all-out in the postseason (except for the occasional wounded favorite in a huge conference tourney) which makes handicapping a lot simpler. You know that when betting the Over/Under on a #2 vs #15 seed, the game is not likely to end in OT or in a foul-o-rama and free-throw gallery. A game between #8 and #9 is much more likely to end with a flurry of points.

Coaches differ on using fouls and quick drives to lengthen a regular-season contest in which the squad is losing. It depends on time, place, and circumstances. Again, the handy thing about taking-on live CBB bets as a stake-building project is that you don’t have to bury a browser in statistics. Having a simple understanding of headlines – coaching moves, conference standings, and so on – can help gauge how the flow of a final 5:00 will affect the O/U outcome.

For instance, head coach Patrick Ewing is having a grand old time rebuilding Georgetown in 2018-19. If Georgetown plays in the NIT Tournament and is behind by 10 or 15 points with 2 minutes to go, by all means the Hoyas are going to extend the game, almost ritualistically if the opponent is making charity shots. No matter what the final score, Ewing will want his charges to drink-up as much of the experience as possible and play hard to the end.

Contrast that to trailing a strong Villanova team by 13 points with 1:47 to go in early January. Even an upbeat, all-positive-all-the-time style of program would be likely to dial it back in that scenario, especially if dealing with injuries or a W/L record that already prohibited a national-title run.

You can expect pretty much everyone to extend games with fouls in the NCAA Tournament, but watch for games in which an invisible referee calls so few fouls that the leading teams aren’t even in the double bonus by the time their trailing opponents begin fouling on purpose.

In fact, when it comes to fouls, it is more efficient to look at live stats than live action. You have time to patiently understand what you see before the live O/U line fluctuates too badly, especially if taking time-out along with the teams.

Find a live March Madness scoreboard with extra details and check to see whether the ref has had a tight or a loose whistle early in the contest. It might be just the clue as to whether the free throw line is likely to drive a point total over the O/U or whether the charity stripe will be lonely in the end.

The Ins-and-Outs of In-Playing NCAA Basketball

Last but not least, you’ll be looking at a lot of live odds while you look for O/U bargains on March Madness. Bookies are known to be selective in what in-play markets they offer for college sports, but in the NCAA Tournament, every market will be offered close to all of the time.

If you do find a decent bet on a live point spread while you’re at it, just remember to look at the vig. It’s probably going to be a 20%-ish house cut even if the line is being priced evenly.

That’s just the cost of doing business with in-play markets, but it means that we should never wager unless we’ve found an accurate prediction on an outcome that can be expected to occur in 60% or more simulated outcomes. I’m pretty confident that if Duke opens the 2019 tournament by tying a #16 seed at halftime, Coach K will rally Zion Williamson and the troops to win by 15+ points in the 2^nd half and cover the point spread. But I won’t go-in unless I’ve got 65% confidence in the pick.

How to get around the big, fat vig on your live college basketball bets? My advice is to play based on the general flow of a contest and not obsess over a specific number on the O/U line. There’s another more-important number to focus on.

Take the Best Price, Not the Best Number

November is the time to talk turkey. What units should you plan to bet when strategizing for a season of action on live-action college hoops?

I don’t like giving advice on $ amounts and units wagered. That’s personal. This treatise should be considered a system of handicapping and timing, not a system for how much money you should personally invest in live bets.

But whatever your style – be it betting the same amount every time or using a progressive confidence-scale to measure heft – make sure not to handicap yourself by allowing the vig to massacre your potential winnings.

If your betting site updates the live odds with changing prices based on the probability of outcomes, then the answer to avoiding a fat vig is to simply bet when the O/U line (or another super-duper value line that you spot in the live markets) has a “normal” pre-game price like (-105) or (-110).

Yes, timing your wager that way technically means you’re picking against the consensus and against software. But the sport itself is too volatile for 1-point changes in the lines to make as big of a difference as a sneaky-steep vig for the house on won bets.

If you handicap with the above pointers in mind during a college basketball game, you’ll find that seldom do you win by 1 or 2 points. If you do, then you probably made a bad pick and got lucky.

A television feed is delayed a little bit to begin with, so there’s no timing precise in-play wagers in basketball. Focus on the book and the odds for a few minutes before making your pick…they’ll reflect a dunk seconds before it happens anyway.

Take better prices to help your stake climb faster. When you can win 60% of Over/Under picks while live-betting March Madness, there’s no point in paying it back to the bookmaker.