College Basketball Predictions
Now that you've completed all the hard work, it's now time to make some college basketball predictions. As with everything in handicapping, there's no exact right way to come to your conclusions...although there are plenty of wrong ways.
Whether you create your own lines through the use of game forecasting or you do it more from of a subjective approach, you still have to come up with accurate college basketball predictions. Don't forget that the bottom line comes down to picking more than 52.4% winners (at least at -110 odds). Most successful sports investors come to their conclusions from many different methods. While they may use a lot of the same data and statistical information, they all don't look at it in the same manner. Don't get me wrong though, they certainly will share a lot of the same type of tools when making college basketball predictions, but as I said earlier, there's not just one way to do it correctly and turn a profit. Sometimes sharp handicappers may like the same side or total, while at other times they may be going against each other. One successful handicappers conclusions aren't always going to be the same as another handicappers...in fact, they probably rarely are when it comes to college basketball and they may even be on opposing sides at times. What's important is how your college basketball predictions look after the season is complete. On a day by day basis, you'll probably experience a large amount of variance, but over the course of a year, it should be a much smoother ride...and believe it or not, you're not going to come out on the positive side every single year. It's nearly impossible to do (although there are some very successful syndicates that do turn a profit every season). You need to set realistic expectations and understand the volatility involved with betting on sports. Making accurate college basketball predictions isn't going to happen over night. It's takes some time and hard work on your part...heck it may even take a season or two before you actually start to invest in your handicapping. What I'd like to do here is take a look at how a more subjective handicapper comes to their conclusions and then look at how a more objective (forecasting models) handicapper does the same. Obviously, not every sports investor can be categorized and most are a combination of the two. So let's take a look at how each can end up with their own respective college basketball predictions.
College Basketball Predictions -
The Subjective Approach As with anything subjective (qualitative), it's going to be a decision you developed yourself from your own conclusions. In our previous chapter, Handicapping A College Basketball Game, we went over a lot of information a subjective investor will study. Actually, we've gone over a lot of it throughout the entire College Basketball Betting Guide. Looking at previous match-ups, trends, historical data, statistics, etc, can all help to create an opinion on a game. You can literally spend as much time as you want researching each game to form some kind of analysis on whether it's worth taking a position...but that conclusion is determined by you and only you. There's no computer or forecasting model (see below) giving you the hard empirical evidence from a data only standpoint, it's up to you to make this decision yourself. Some will simply go on a gut feeling, while others will go with their first instinct. Accuracy though is obviously the most important. If you're doing all this research and repeatedly picking losers then you better change something and try a different method because you have nobody else to blame but yourself. But as I said before, most investors use a combination of quantitative and qualitative handicapping...and I personally think that's the best route. Let you're forecasting model narrow down the number of games by looking at it objectively and then you can dig deeper from a more subjective level. I think you probably get the point by now, but it's important to know there isn't some kind of secret formula to turning a profit. It's about hard work, discipline and creating a philosophy that can be tweaked and adjusted over time...just like a good forecasting model will allow.
College Basketball Predictions -
The Objective Approach The objective approach to making college basketball predictions has been used for quite some time, but it's really become more prominent over the past few years (this was written in 2011). Developing proprietary forecasting models to predict sporting events is becoming the norm more and more with professional handicappers. Most of the sports handicappers we recommend utilize some kind of forecasting model in the their college basketball handicapping...along with applying some subjective handicapping as well. It seems the new selling point for the quantitative handicapper is telling you how many times they run simulations for each game...most I see are anywhere from 10,000 to 50,000 times. These simulations will give an average margin of victory and total points scored along with some sort of confidence level for the projection. Trust me, it sounds complicated (and it certainly can be depending the amount of data factored into the model), but it can be done by just about any handicapper through the use of Microsoft Excel. As I've said a million times before, Excel can be a handicappers best friend for finding objective information. You can run your own simulations, whether you want to do it a 1,000 times or 100,000 times. Creating an accurate forecasting model isn't going to happen overnight, but it can be self taught. You probably want me to explain exactly how to do it, but you know I don't work that way. I would encourage you to take a class or even better, simply Google "creating a forecasting model in Excel" and you'll find plenty of information that will help (you'll also want to check out the Pythagorean Formula for basketball as well...it will help give you an expected win % from your forecasted numbers for each team that you can then turn into a predicted spread). If I were just beginning to handicap college basketball, this is the first place I'd start. It will require a substantial amount of time up front and it may take a season to track results and make changes, but it can be well worth the time and very rewarding. It doesn't even have to be done with Excel since there are many different types of programming software on the market today, so I'll leave that decision up to you. I can assure you every sharp handicapper and betting syndicate has some type of forecasting model for the sports they bet. I'm not going to go into regression analysis, confidence intervals, standard deviation, etc. First of all, it's not real exciting and that's not the point I'm trying I'm trying to make. Yes, you will need to broaden your horizon of statistics if you're going to create a forecasting model to make college basketball predictions, but I'm not going to bore you to death with the minutia. Take some time to learn what you can and when you've finished, you'll be a sharper handicapper than 99% of other bettors in the market place today.
College Basketball Predictions -
The Wrap Up In wrapping up with our College Basketball Predictions chapter, I want to stress that one method isn't necessarily better than the other. In fact, a combination of both is probably what's ideal for the long term. Turning a profit and finding +EV is not an easy task...if it were, we'd all be successful bettors and the sportsbooks would be out of business. Creating a method for making accurate college basketball predictions can be just as rewarding as having a positive ROI. And let's face, if you're making accurate predictions then you should be turning a profit. As I've said before, take the time to learn as much as you can and apply it to creating your own successful philosophy. Well, that pretty much wraps up our college basketball handicapping section (we've covered plenty over the last few chapters), so now let's look at some advice and tips for betting NCAA Conference Tournaments. As always, best of luck in all your sports betting endeavors.
Have A Question or Want to Add Your Own Thoughts ?
Have A Question or Want to Add Your Own Thoughts? Well let's hear it so we can all help each other become better handicappers.
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