Short Rest and College Basketball Totals
One of the things that typically separates college basketball from the NBA is the number of games teams play each week. Most NCAA teams will play two or three games per week, while it isn't unusual for an NBA team to have four, and occisionally five, games in a given seven-day span.The pros quickly become accustom to the grind of the lengthy season, while college teams tend to have a few problems when playing more than they are used to. That effect is somewhat magnified when you have two college teams who return to the court quicker than they traditionally do.
This especially holds true for games which have higher totals, meaning those games with a posted over/under of 150 or more.
We touched on this a bit in 2011 College Basketball Over/Under Stats, but this is a more detailed look at a specific situation, as opposed to looking at all teams in a more generic setting.
We'll define short rest as a team playing its next game the following night or after a one-day break, so no more than one day to rest in between games is permitted under the rules of this method.
The System
Basically, what we're looking for are games where both teams are playing with short rest and the posted total is 150 or greater. In these games, we'll look to bet the under. We are also looking at regular season games only, no post-season tournaments, since many teams do play back-to-back games in conference tournaments.Since the beginning of the 2008-09 season, we would have gone 80-59-1 (57.6%) simply by wagering on the under in these contests that had a posted total of 150 or greater.
If we do a more detailed breakdown and look at the results in various total groups:
150 to 154.5: 37-51-1
155 to 159.5: 19-22
160 and over: 3-7
The most profitable situation has been the games in the 150 to 154.5 group, as we would have gone 51-37-1 (58%) by wagering on the under, which would have netted us a profit of 10.3 units.
The 155 to 159.5 group is the worst performing of the three, although it still checks in an above-even 53.7-percent, while our best winning percentage comes from the 160-and-over group, although the number of plays is minimal. Still, you can't argue against anything that produces at such a high winning percentage.
Best Bet Method
Those who are interested in obtaining a higher winning percentage with fewer plays can simply toss out all games with a total of less than 160 and concentrate on the others. Since the start of the 2008-09 season games involving two teams playing with short rest and an over/under of greater than 160 are 3-7, with the under cashing 70-percent of the time. And if we go back to the start of the 2006-07 season, we'd see a 14-29 record, meaning the under has come through at a 67.4-percent clip.This one has withstood the test of time, as we can even go all the back to the start of the 1997-98 season and see that the under has come through at a solid rate, as the totals stand at 28-47-1, which equates to a 62.7-percent winning ratio for the under to come through.
The results presented here were obtained from this year's Stat Attack For College Basketball 2011-12 program and gives you an idea of the type of research that you can do with the program.
