College Tournament Notebook: How To Analyze Small Schools
This is the week the Big Dance takes shape. The bubble teams are thinning with big and small conference titles being decided. A couple of things to keep in mind with small conference teams are their recent history, their style of play, and how they played against the big boys.
Some of these small conference teams that will be advancing to the Big Dance you might be seeing for the first time this season. Who are they? Will they wilt on the national stage? Or, will they shock the sports world and attach their name to the year for all to remember, like Indiana State 1979 and George Mason 2006?
From a sports betting perspective, one way to analyze how these lesser-known teams might fare is to look at their history and their style of play. For instance, Eastern Kentucky will be in the Big Dance after winning the Ohio Valley tournament. Now look at HOW they won: They survived in the Ohio Valley tourney, narrowly nipping Tennessee Tech 57-54 (as a +2 dog) and upsetting Austin Peay 63-62 as a +2 dog in the title game. Both those games sailed under the total, so you can get a sense from those numbers what style of play this team prefers.
Like Air Force, they are not going to run-and-gun, but their pace is to slow it down more and stay competitive with tough defense. In fact, a closer look finds them at 16-11 under the total for the season and 8-1-1 under the total the last 10 games! So Eastern Kentucky might be a team to look at under the total, as they are more likely to want to slow things down. Their game against Ohio State went under back in November, with Eastern Kentucky scoring just 45 points.
Now comes the fun part: Who will they match up against? If they take on, say, Air Force, you can guess it's going to be a very low total. But what if they play a running team, like North Carolina or Marquette? That makes it tougher on oddsmakers, juggling two very different styles. One way to attack that would be to look at how the team fared when stepping up in competition during the regular season, or how they fared a year ago if they made the NCAA tournament.
A good example of that for this week is Davidson. Unlike Eastern Kentucky, Davidson is all about uptempo, averaging 82 points behind junior point guard Jason Richards (7.3 assists per game) and freshman guard Stephen Curry (21 ppg). Curry is the son of former NBA standout Dell Curry and was the Southern Conference freshman of the year.
Davidson is 4-1 against the spread as a dog, covering against Ohio State in the Big Dance a year ago, and this year in the regular season in a 78-68 loss at Michigan and an 81-75 loss at Missouri. What stands out is that this team has been competitive when stepping up, although the only non-cover was a 75-47 loss at Duke. The point is they've been able to score on several bigger programs and don't change their strategy - they will run at anyone!
Even looking back a year ago can help you find clues. In the case of Davidson, last season they beat Missouri at home, 82-73, lost at Syracuse 90-80, and lost at NC Charlotte in OT, 85-81. Davidson went over the total in all of those games with the exception of the Duke loss. So a handicapper might look at Eastern Kentucky as a possible under team, but Davidson as an aggressive offensive team that might be better suited to go over.
That should help get you started. Examine how small schools have fared when stepping up in competition. Not so much whether they upset the big boys, although that's important, but whether they stay competitive AND whether they change their style of play or not when stepping up. That can help you find edges with the side and total, doubling your opportunities to find soft numbers on each tourney matchup.
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