NCAA Basketball Sports Betting Arizona at California
BetUS NCAA Basketball Sports Betting Odds: CALIFORNIA -3.5
Here are some of the NCAA basketball sports betting trends as they relate to this matchup:
* ARIZ has covered five of its last seven games
* ARIZ has won four of its last five games SU
* ARIZ has lost its last five road games SU
* ARIZ has covered one of its last five road games
* ARIZ has played four of its last five road games OVER the total
* CAL has won its last five games SU
* CAL has covered six of its last eight games
* CAL has played three of its last four games UNDER the total
* CAL has won its last nine home games SU
Also...
* ARIZ has won 18 of the last 20 meetings SU
* ARIZ has covered 11 of the last 16 meetings
* Four of the last five meetings have gone OVER the total
* ARIZ has covered five of the last seven meetings as the road team
* ARIZ has won seven of the last nine meetings SU as the road team
* Six of the last seven meetings in Berkeley have gone OVER the total
* CAL has made more three-pointers in four of the last six meetings
Arizona has already been through a non-conference schedule where it has faced good programs and good players, including Robert Vaden and UAB, Wink Adams and UNLV, that whole Gonzaga crew, and defending national champion Kansas. Undoubtedly the wins over the 'Zags and Jayhawks are a signal that this Wildcat bunch has very dangerous potential when the post-season rolls around. The road tests against Texas A&M and UNLV have not been passed, however, and that is a concern here.
The Bears are getting their marching orders from former Stanford and Golden State Warriors coach Mike Montgomery, which ought to present an interesting situation when his team visits the Maples Pavilion on January 17. Cal has disposed of UNLV, DePaul, Utah and WAC contender Nevada, which is all a pretty good warmup for the Pac-10 schedule.
Montgomery has a team that doesn't mind pushing the pace (78.8 ppg) and they are taking reasonably good care of the ball (12.2 TO's per contest). What sticks out about this California squad, however, is that they can really stick the trey. Right now the Bears lead the nation with 50.6% accuracy beyond the arc, and the major threats are Jerome Randle (56%, 19.5 ppg) and Theo Robertson (61.5%, 12.1 ppg). They'll stretch the Arizona defense out.
Jordan Hill, who has been the guy giving 'Zona such good inside play (18.9 ppg, 11.8 rpg), has been hampered by a lower leg injury, unable to play or practice with the tam, but he will probably be pressed into service tonight. Hill has to play and be sharp to draw Cal inside and open things up for the likes of Chase Budinger, who is 50% from the three-point line.
In terms of the technical numbers, Arizona has owned this series, winning 18 of the last 21 meetings. We can not say that we trust them on the road, though, and we are also concerned about their overall discipline as this program has gone through the hands of Lute Olson, Kevin O'Neill, back to Olson and to current interim coach Russ Pernell in a little over a year. We're looking for Cal to avenge last season's sweep, and we will lay the 3.5 points in the BetUS NCAA college basketball sports betting odds.
JAY'S PLAY: CALIFORNIA -3.5 ***
(Graded on a scale of 1-4 stars)
(c) 1994-2008BetUS.
Tips for College Basketball Betting
In terms of sheer numbers, no sport matches the opportunity, intrigue, depth of quality, or endless variety involved with college basketball betting. Nearly every day of the week, from mid-November through March, bettors and sportsbooks match bankrolls on the hardwood fortunes of 235 teams in more than a dozen conferences.
While number crunching and detailed analysis always are essential tools in college basketball betting, a degree of "art" compliments the "science" and is helpful, too. The successful bettor understands that subjective analysis of a number of other factors also must be considered.
Let's look at a number of these elements:
Teeming with teams: Competition all but mandates that a sportsbook posts prices on over 200 teams, (as compared to 30 NBA clubs) providing the gambler with many more options. For bettors, it's a lot easier to find a bad number among 100 games than it is to find one among 13 or 14.
Home, sweet home: Sure, the home court is a factor in NBA play but it's the tiresome travel associated with getting to a road game that puts the visiting team at a disadvantage in the pro ranks. For that reason, NBA spreads are affected more by schedule than by actual home court.
Since NCAA teams only play about 30 games a year, lengthy road trips aren't a factor in college play. Nevertheless, with its requisite contingent of chanting, sign-waving students, the home court really does matter in college basketball betting. In fact, the home court can be such an advantage that there may be as much as a 10-point swing in home-and-home series pointspreads.
Morale: A shorter schedule and more heated rivalries, particularly within conferences or states, all but guarantees that emotion, especially when you're dealing with impressionable teenagers, will play a greater role in college basketball than it does in the NBA. For that reason, assessing a team's motivation can be a crucial factor in college basketball betting.
Revenge: Another factor unique to college basketball is revenge. A team that lost to an opponent once often is troublesome to tame the second time around. This is a scenario that plays itself out in conference play, where splits are more common than sweeps.
Freshmen: Time was that first year recruits sat on the pine and waited their turn. Nowadays, if you're good enough to play, coaches put you in the game.
Interestingly, the emergence of freshmen as major contributors has required sportsbooks and bettors to track the careers of high school seniors, monitoring their college choices and assessing the impact they may have on those programs. Ohio State, North Carolina, Texas, Connecticut, Duke, Gonzaga, Miami, Fl, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Wake Forest, Stanford and Kansas are among the schools whose recruiting hauls could have a sizable impact on their fortunes this season.
Since no sport is more affected by a single player than basketball, every new addition--freshman, junior college or transfer--has the opportunity to alter the dynamic of the team.
Three-for-all: Further complicating the oddsmaking and betting equation is that college basketball is much more like a three-act play than a seamless season.
Act I begins in mid-November and extends through the end of the year when teams play most of their non-conference games. For teams still seeking an identity, this is a chance for experimentation with different lineups and strategies, a time of growing pains that often are reflected by the pointspread. Other teams, ones with experienced players, have an obvious advantage in cohesiveness. After all, basketball is a team sport.
Act II begins with the tip-off of the conference schedule, which starts in January. Teams have worked out the kinks by now and, for the most part, are ready to face a series of opponents with whom they have some familiarity. The teams may play each other as many as two or three times each season--twice in conference play and perhaps again in the league's tournament--and coaches know each other and their preferred style of play. There are few surprises and, except for those occasions when the very best teams are playing the very worst teams, close games are common.
For the fortunate, the curtain will rise for Act III, the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, in March. It is the unpredictable nature of the "Big Dance," the convergence of teams that have as much in common as Rick Majerus and hair spray, which makes "March Madness" the oddsmaking and sports betting challenge that it is.
Because of its uniqueness, bet makers and bet takers approach the tournament both respectful and wary of an entirely different set of factors that rarely come into play during college basketball's regular season. We'll examine that aspect of college basketball betting next spring.
(c) 2000-2008 Cappersmall.co. All rights reserved.
The allure of gambling
Regardless of whether its variable reinforcement of reward or the thrill of risk-taking, gambling has widespread appeal.
Millions of Americans who gamble in casinos might have something in common with laboratory rats.
B.F. Skinner, the famed psychologist, decades ago studied how rats could be conditioned, or taught, to press bars and levers for food pellets.
Sound familiar? Next time you're inside a casino, take a look at someone methodically feeding quarters into a slot machine.
Skinner also discovered that rats learn through fixed reinforcement, when the pellet appeared at set intervals, such as after they pressed their levers 10 times. Rats on fixed-reinforcement schedules seemed able to relax, content in knowing that food would appear at predictable intervals.
But variable reinforcement, when pellets would appear at random with no perceptible pattern between behavior and reward, led to a form of rodent obsession, with rats compulsively pressing levers on the chance the next push would yield the desired payout.
Gambling is an example of variable or intermittent reinforcement. A gambler learns that an action, making a bet, can result in a desired outcome, winning. The variable aspect of winning -- a gambler might win three bets in a row before losing the next 10 -- makes it all the more difficult to get up and walk away.
But David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, isn't ready to apply scientific research done by Skinner and others to all aspects of gambling.
"I've got some problems with that," he said. "because people really aren't rats."
Besides, playing poker and picking pro football games requires more thought and focus than pushing a slot machine's buttons.
"Certainly for a slot machine, you can almost think about that as pressing a lever," said Clayton Neighbors, a University of Washington psychiatry professor and associate director for the university's Center for the Study of Health and Risk Behaviors. "But it doesn't work as well for most interactive forms of gambling."
Schwartz earned a doctorate in history at UCLA and worked in the surveillance department of an Atlantic City, N.J., casino. Schwartz also studied anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. The allure of gambling, he said, goes back to prehistoric times when humans were eking out an existence as hunters and gatherers.
"Today in life, there is not so much chance and risk," he said. "I think gambling is a socially acceptable way for people to get that risk in their everyday lives."
Those who get a charge out of participating in extreme sports, piecing together a speculative business deals or even cheating on their spouses may get a similar jolt from sitting down at the blackjack table.
"People who are thrill seekers and high in sensation seeking are more likely to gamble," Neighbors said. "But they're also more likely to do a lot of other things, drink, experiment with drugs, the whole constellation of risk behaviors."
Gambling has a particular appeal to high-profile athletes, such as Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley, former basketball stars who thrived on the rush of taking that last-second shot.
"They're used to this adrenalin," Schwartz said. "They're used to this excitement. Betting a lot of money on golf or whatever they do when they retire is one way to recapture that."
But that doesn't explain why taking a chance is so mesmerizing to some but not to others. People clearly have different risk tolerances.
"No one is really sure why that is," Schwartz said. "It appears to be something that is innate. Either you've got it or you don't."
$94 billion industry
More and more Americans seem to have it. Legal gambling in the U.S. -- casinos, racetracks, lotteries and cardrooms -- brought in almost $94 billion last year, a 70 percent increase in 10 years.
Some $8 billion will be bet on Super Bowl XLIII, set for Feb. 1 in Tampa, Fla. Only a tiny slice, slightly less than $100 million, will be wagered legally in Nevada sports books.
More than 10 percent of Americans participate in "March Madness" pools for college basketball playoffs, with the amount wagered exceeding $2.5 billion.
They are taking part in an activity that has been around since the birth of civilization itself.
Ty Lostutter, a University of Washington clinical psychology graduate student and research coordinator for the Center for the Study of Health and Risk Behaviors, said Egyptians shaped the first dice and Chinese are credited with inventing playing cards. There is even some indication of gambling during prehistoric times, Lostutter said.
"There is something about the inherent nature of the risk, the excitement we get from not knowing the outcome, that has an appeal to human beings in general," he said.
The reason why pathological gamblers engage in destructive behavior, for both themselves and their families, can be quite different.
Chris Thompson, a chemical dependency professional, works for Community Services Northwest, the state's publicly funded gambling treatment provider in Vancouver. Thompson said many of his clients gamble to escape from some problem in their lives, what he called a "life stressor."
"And it's not about winning," he said. "It's about getting away from pain."
"I've had a few action gamblers," Thompson said, referring to risk-takers motivated by the thrill. "But the majority that come through our agency tend to be escape gamblers who go over to Jantzen Beach and do the video poker."
Some of those action gamblers might be prone to mood swings.
"A lot of the people who gamble big that I know," Schwartz said, "they tend to be kind of hot and cold people, where they are not quite bipolar, where they have periods of excitement and periods of down."
Reward pathways
New imaging research on how gambling affects the brain is finding similarities between those ups and downs and the high experienced by drug users.
"There is some (research) to suggest that there are reward pathways in the brain that seem to light up," Lostutter said. "There is sort of a reward circuitry in our brain, and gambling taps into that much like drug use."
Earlier this decade, Lostutter and Neighbors examined why University of Washington students gamble. The No. 1 reason, based on questionnaires filled out by 184 undergraduate students, was to make money.
But for many gamblers, it's not about making money. It's not about feeling an adrenalin rush. It's not about escaping from the pain of a troubled marriage or a dead-end job.
"For most people, it's just entertainment," Neighbors said. "They spend a certain amount of money and they expect to lose a certain amount of money."
"People gamble for more than just the chance to win money," Schwartz agreed. "Because if it was just the chance to win money, the millions of people who go to these casinos every year would figure out they don't build casinos just to give away money."
(c) 2008 columbian.com. All rights reserved.
Crean knows it will be hard work getting Hoosiers righted
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Passion led Tom Crean to Indiana. Success could turn him into a statewide folk hero.
The former Marquette coach jumped right into the high-stakes game of Hoosiers basketball on Wednesday, accepting the challenge of rebuilding the school's tattered reputation and restoring its national appeal despite all the blemishes surrounding the program.
"This place, this university, this program, for as long as I can remember, has stood for class and integrity, doing the right thing and being the right way," Crean said during his introductory news conference. "We're not going to be overwhelmed by the challenges, we're going to embrace them."
To show he was all in, Crean went all out.
Before stepping behind the podium, he met with his new players, told stories and offered to have more meetings before he heads to San Antonio for the Final Four. The 42-year-old coach, who grew up in Michigan, even took a moment to shake the hand of football coach Bill Lynch.
"I haven't gotten a chance to work with a football coach in a long time," joked Crean, who spent the past nine seasons at a non-football playing school.
Crean also walked over to his family, kissed his wife, Joani, and two of his three children -- the 2-year-old ran off to find stickers. Finally, he held up a newly printed T-shirt that read "Crean and Crimson," a play on the school colors, cream and crimson.
Despite Crean's charming wit and enthusiastic personality, the honeymoon will be short.
He must deal with the taint of last season when Indiana's once-impeccable image for playing by the rules was shattered by allegations of Kelvin Sampson making impermissible phone calls. The NCAA accused Sampson of committing five major infractions, which led to Sampson's resignation Feb. 22.
The university's self-imposed punishment includes the loss of one scholarship next season.
And, of course, he must win.
So Indiana is giving Crean some extra time to clean up this mess.
He agreed to an eight-year deal worth $18.24 million, an annual average of $2.3 million -- believed to be the largest in school history. It's more than double what Sampson was scheduled to make last year, $1.1 million, and is a year longer than the contract Sampson signed in 2006. Sampson also accepted a $750,000 buyout to resign on Feb. 22.
While Crean pleaded for the patience of fans to right things, the coach who took Marquette to the 2003 Final Four acknowledged he will rely on his trademark recruiting skills to sign players who can meet the expectations of a school looking to cleanse its stained image.
"I'm going to look for people who understand why we wear the candy-striped pants and why we wear Indiana on our jerseys," he said. "Our eyes are wide open right now for Indiana basketball, and we can't wait to get started."
The Hoosiers can't wait to start over, either, after one of the bleakest seasons in school history.
Player suspensions, player dissension, the NCAA allegations and a midseason coaching change overshadowed everything Indiana did on the court -- won 25 games; was in contention for the Big Ten title; spent all but one week in the Top 25.
Then came the two-week coaching search.
The combination made players anxious, and they're hoping Wednesday's announcement will finally provide a respite from their turbulent six-month whirlwind.
"I think it helped to find a coach and get everything behind us," forward Eli Holman said. "It's like another chapter to a book."
Despite his enthusiasm, the new coach can't solve every problem.
Indiana is scheduled to have its hearing in front of the NCAA infractions committee in June, and there is no indication whether the school could face an even harsher punishment when the ruling is handed down.
Two players, starting guards Armon Bassett and Jamarcus Ellis, were kicked off the team by interim coach Dan Dakich on Tuesday, before Crean was hired. Athletic director Rick Greenspan said he would let Crean make the decision about possible reinstatement. Players said they were told Crean would meet with both players later.
Still, Crean, a longtime admirer of Indiana basketball, found the job attractive.
He said he made his decision between two phone calls from former college coach Eddie Fogler, who was a consultant to the school's 10-member search committee.
"This was a heart decision," Crean said, his voice cracking. "This was not a business decision or a legacy decision. I'd had other opportunities to walk away, and none of them felt like this. I'm going to miss those people a lot, but I'm excited to be here."
Somehow, though, the hiring of the most prominent employee at Indiana University -- men's basketball coach -- still got upstaged even in this basketball-crazy state.
Instead of holding the news conference on the Assembly Hall floor, as was the case for Mike Davis and Sampson, it was moved to a room underneath the football stadium because a Hillary Clinton rally was scheduled Wednesday afternoon in Assembly Hall.
The players were just happy it was over.
"It didn't seem quick enough, it's been horrible for us," Jordan Crawford said of the search. "It was a very long season, a lot of stuff happened, so it's good to start it over and have a better season."
The hiring of Crean, Indiana hopes, will make that possible.
"He's very excited about the job," Crawford said. "Indiana is a good job. If you're doing good, everyone talks about Indiana University as a big-time school, and he's very passionate about it. So he's going to work hard to get the job done."
Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press
Bob Hoffman selected as new basketball coach at Mercer
MACON, Ga. -- Bob Hoffman, who has been successful as a college and minor league professional coach, became men's basketball coach at Mercer University on Thursday.
He succeeded Mark Slonaker, whose contract was not renewed after going 11-19 this season and 6-10 in the Atlantic Sun Conference. Slonaker coached the Bears for 11 seasons beginning in 1997, and had a 128-189 record.
Hoffman has a 400-171 coaching record at Texas-Pan American and Oklahoma Baptist, his alma mater. He also guided the ABA Arkansas Aeros to a 25-2 record in 2006-2007 and had a 17-29 mark with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, an NBA Development League franchise.
His also did a three-year stint with the Southern Nazarene women's team, compiling an 88-16 record and capturing the 1989 NAIA national title in his second season.
Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press
Arkansas fans could be tough on Texas in South Region
AUSTIN, Texas -- Listen up Arkansas: Texas coach Rick Barnes says you'd better be nice to his Longhorns or he won't bring his team back to play the Razorbacks next season.
Texas (28-6), the No. 2 seed in the South Region, plays No. 15 Austin Peay (24-10) on Friday in North Little Rock, Ark., in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
And while the game is close enough for Texas fans to travel, the Longhorns should expect to be greeted by a hostile crowd fueled by the old Southwest Conference Arkansas-Texas border rivalry that burns generations deep.
Barnes suggested on a Monday conference call that if his team gets the same rowdy treatment Arkansas received in Austin in tournaments past, he won't come back to play anytime soon. Texas is supposed to travel to Arkansas for a game in Fayetteville next season.
"If the fans don't treat us well, we're not going to come. You can put that out there," Barnes said. "I'm serious. We've got enough money here, we can buy our way out of it. They'd better be good to us."
A funny line, but Arkansas-Texas is serious business to fans in those two states.
Just ask former Arkansas coach Nolan Richardson what it can be like to play on a supposedly neutral floor. His teams barely survived games in Austin in 1990 and 1995 in front of crowds that lustily booed the Razorbacks.
"Everybody was against us," Richardson said. "It was fun for me."
In 1990, Arkansas beat Princeton 68-64 and Dayton 86-84, then got its payback by beating Texas in Dallas to get to the Final Four. In 1995, the defending national champion Razorbacks were back again and barely survived close wins over Texas Southern (79-78) and Syracuse (96-94).
"They booed us, they did everything," Richardson said. "When things start rocking and momentum changes, you'd better make a shot. That's the only way to keep the fans out of the game."
The 1990 Austin crowds had been whipped up by a game just a few weeks earlier that earned Richardson his "Strollin' Nolan" nickname.
In a wild Arkansas win over Texas in overtime, Richardson was so upset by the officiating that he left the Razorbacks' bench for the locker room with 14 seconds left in regulation, then returned for the overtime. Incensed fans in Austin let his team have it when they came back to town for the first and second rounds of the NCAA tournament.
In 1995, the Austin American-Statesman reported that many Razorbacks, including Richardson, made inverted "Hook'em Horns" signs, considered in Austin a show of disrespect.
One thing that could help Texas is that Arkansas plays Friday night in the East Region. Razorbacks fans may be paying too much attention to their team to care much about Texas.
But Richardson said the Longhorns should expect an "anybody but Texas" treatment in North Little Rock. If Texas wins Friday, it plays Sunday against the winner of Friday's Miami-St. Mary's matchup.
"They're going to hear it," from Arkansas fans. "Go ahead and buckle your seat belt."
The Texas-Arkansas rivalry goes back to 1894 when the schools first met on the football field, and the bitter feelings across the border fueled a hoops rivalry as well with colorful coaches and wild games. A riot nearly erupted after a physical game at Arkansas in 1982 when Razorbacks fans blocked the ramp to the Texas locker room and players and fans started shoving and punches were thrown.
Barnes said all that history will be lost on his current team. The rivalry pretty much fizzled out after Arkansas left the old Southwest Conference after the 1990-91 season.
"Our guys don't know the rivalry that existed between Texas and Arkansas," Barnes said.
Chances are they'll learn real fast. If the Longhorns can win two games in Arkansas, they'll get to play in Houston, where huge pro-Texas crowds could make it a home away from home much like San Antonio was in 2003, the last time Texas made the Final Four.
"(The) coaches have already told us that we're going for the big picture now," Texas guard A.J. Abrams said. "We can't think that far in advance. We have to just worry about this game coming up."
Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press
Goldwire scores 24 as Charlotte tops Massachusetts in A10 tourney
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- Leemire Goldwire hit a go-ahead 3-pointer with 62 seconds to play and clinched the game with another in the closing seconds as Charlotte stunned Massachusetts 69-65 in the quarterfinals of the Atlantic 10 Conference tournament on Thursday night.
The sixth-seeded 49ers (20-12) rallied from deficits of 18 points early in the second half and nine points in the final five minutes in upsetting the third-seeded Minutemen (21-10).
Goldwire finished with 24 points and Lamont Mack added 23 before fouling out with 49 seconds to play.
Gary Forbes and Etienne Brower had 14 points apiece to lead Massachusetts, which came into the tournament riding a six-game winning streak.
Charlotte will play second-seeded Temple (19-12) in the semifinals on Friday night at Boardwalk Hall. The Owls beat La Salle 84-75 earlier in the night. Top-seeded Xavier and fifth-seeded Saint Joseph's will play in the other semifinal.
Charlie Coley added 14 points and a career-high 17 rebounds for the 49ers.
Trailing 62-53 with just under five minutes to play, Charlotte used an 10-1 spurt and tied the game at 63 on a fast break layup by Coley with 1:58 to play.
Dante Milligan tipped in a shot by Forbes to give Massachusetts a 65-63 lead with 1:35 to play, but Goldwire took a pass in the right corner with the shot clock running down and swished a 3-pointer to put the 49ers ahead 66-65.
Chris Lowe, who added 12 points, had a chance to put Massachusetts ahead with 48.7 seconds to play when he was fouled by Mack. However, he missed the front end of a 1-and-1 and Charlotte worked the clock down.
Goldwire took a straight-on 3-pointer from about 23 feet and nailed it with 18 seconds to play for a four-point lead.
Brower missed a 3-pointer in the closing seconds when Massachusetts could not get a shot to fall.
A disgusted Forbes lay prone on the floor after the final buzzer and stormed off the court without shaking hands.
Brower scored eight points in a 16-4 run that ended the first half and put the Minutemen ahead 36-19. A 3-pointer by Lowe stretched the lead to 18, but Charlotte rallied as Mack scored 16 points in a 29-8 spurt that got the 49ers back in the game.
Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press
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