College Basketball Season To Date Overall Trends: An Analysis

It’s the day after Christmas. There are no games on the schedule for today, but some college basketball action returns in the next couple days. It’s a good time to take a look back at the first month and a half of the season and see how things have broken. 

The under has edged out the over thus far, but it has been extremely close. There have been quite a few overtime games, and the overtime games have gone 87-19 toward the over (not surprisingly). 

In recent years the road team has actually done better, but that has flipped so far this season. Things are still even enough here that I wouldn’t want to read a lot into it.

Underdogs have been the better side to be on so far this season. There have been a lot of big spreads, and the favorites have had trouble covering those big numbers. Let’s take the numbers one step further:

Home Underdogs are 275-223 ATS (55.2%) so far this season. 

The biggest winning strategy so far this season has been backing those home underdogs. I don’t know that it is predictive of what will come the rest of the season.

Keep in mind that many leagues will start playing conference games in the next week. There won’t be nearly as many big spreads. The teams will be more familiar with each other. 

Keep an eye on games with bigger point spreads as possible under plays. Why? There is a far smaller chance of overtime. There is also a smaller chance of a late foul fest. 

I would also encourage bettors to consider trying to find reasons to back teams who have done poorly against the spread on the season thus far, and fade teams who have done very well against the spread thus far. This is the time of the year where the marketplace can go too far in each direction on many teams.