Bearcats hope to clip wings of 18th-ranked Golden Eagles

NCAA Basketball Betting Lines

02/11/2012 - Milwaukee, WI (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The 18th-ranked Marquette Golden Eagles will try to keep pace in the race for the Big East Conference regular-season title, as they entertain the Cincinnati Bearcats today at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee.

Cincinnati comes in sporting a solid 17-7 record, and its 7-4 conference mark has it in the upper half of the Big East standings. The Bearcats are riding a modest two-game win streak, with their most recent triumph coming in a 76-54 rout of St. John's on the road this past Wednesday. It was the sixth road win of the campaign for UC, and a nice way to bounce back following losses in their previous two trips (West Virginia, Rutgers) away from the Queen City.

As for the Golden Eagles, they are one of only two teams in the Big East to have won at least 20 games to this point in the campaign, Syracuse being the other, and their 9-3 conference mark has them just two games behind the first- place Orange. Marquette is an impressive 12-1 at home this season, the only setback coming against SEC foe Vanderbilt back on December 29.

Cincinnati owns a 25-18 lead in the all-time series with Marquette, but things are all square in Milwaukee (9-9). The Bearcats won the last meeting, 67-60, at the Bradley Center last March, and the road team has won four of the last five meetings.

Yancy Gates and Sean Kilpatrick scored 14 points apiece, Cashmere Wright logged his first double-double of the season with 12 points and 10 rebounds, and Dion Dixon chipped in 10 points, as Cincinnati dominated St. John's from start to finish in what turned out to be a 22-point win for the visiting Bearcats. The team knocked down 51.7 percent of its field goal attempts, which included a 7-of-16 showing from three-point range, and it easily won the battle on the boards, 49-29. The Red Storm were limited to 32.8 percent field goal efficiency, actually shooting better from beyond the arc (.417). About the only thing UC coach Mick Cronin could complain about was the fact that his team committed 16 turnovers. Kilpatrick (15.4 ppg, 5.0 rpg) is one of four starters averaging double figures in the scoring column for the Bearcats, who net 69.7 ppg on the strength of their .362 three-point FG percentage. Defensively, the club allows just 60.1 ppg, with foes shooting a mere 41.1 percent from the floor and 31.4 percent from downtown. Gates is close to averaging a double-double, as he accounts for 12.7 points and 9.2 caroms per contest.

Darius Johnson-Odom scored 23 points, while Jae Crowder and Jamil Wilson both produced double-doubles in helping push Marquette past DePaul earlier this week. In all, five players scored in double digits for the Golden Eagles, who battled from behind by shooting 52.5 percent from the field, despite missing seven of their 10 three-point attempts. Wilson finished with 18 points and 10 boards, the team coming up with 35 rebounds in the game. DePaul's reserves outscored Marquette's, 25-8, but the Golden Eagles outscore the Blue Demons at the free-throw line (22-10), in the paint (50-36) and out on the break (16-6). Johnson-Odom (18.2 ppg, 3.5 rpg) and Crowder (16.0 ppg, 7.6 rpg) are the only two players averaging double figures in scoring for MU, although three others are close to joining the ranks as they net a minimum of 8.5 ppg. As a collective unit, Marquette is lighting up the scoreboard to the tune of 75.9 ppg, while the opposition does so for 65.1 ppg. Foes are shooting just 40.5 percent from the field, and they've committed nearly 100 more turnovers than have the Golden Eagles to this point in the season.

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Sportsbook Betting Lines

Who Makes the Sportsbook Betting Lines?

Las Vegas Sports Consultants (LVSC) is the world’s premier oddsmaking company and the most respected authority on making the lines. Mike Seba is a Senior Oddsmaker at LVSC and has been making lines for the last six years. In our extended interview, Seba explained that there are 4-5 oddsmakers assigned to make lines for each of the major sports (pro & college football and basketball; MLB, NHL, boxing, golf). Each of these oddsmakers bring unique opinions, strengths and weaknesses to the process. Oddsmakers at LVSC are professional sports junkies who love what they do and would probably do it for nothing if you asked them, but they do get paid for it. By necessity their approach is very research-oriented and concise, since with millions of dollars at risk there is little margin for error.

“You either have a passion for it or you don’t,” Seba said.

“The #1 thing for us is to make a line for each game that creates good two-way action. We do this by drawing from past experiences and applying them to current situations. People think it’s much more complicated, but it’s not. “

What are the Football Betting Lines Trying to Accomplish?

There is a common misconception that point spreads represent the oddsmakers’ prediction of how many points the favorite will win by. That is not the case at all – their intent is NOT to evenly split the ATS result between the teams; rather, their goal is to attract equal betting action on both sides. Stated another way, they want to create a line that half the people find appealing to bet one way while the other half find it appealing to bet the other way (known as ‘dividing the action’).

Divided action means the sportsbook is guaranteed a profit on the game because of the fee charged to the bettor (called juice or vig – typically $11 bet to win $10).

How the Opening Line Is Made

The opening line is the first line created by the oddsmakers, which is then sent out to sportsbooks. Of course there is an entire method to the madness on how the opening line is created. Seba explained that it all starts with each oddsmaker creating a line on each game based upon their own personal approach. This usually includes having up-to-date power ratings on each team.

Power ratings are the oddsmaker’s value of each team and are used as a guide to calculate a "preliminary" pointspread on an upcoming game. The power ratings are adjusted after each game a team plays. Examples of non-game factors that would require an adjustment to a team's power rating are key player injuries and player trades.

Once a game’s power rating based pointspread is determined, the oddsmaker will make adjustments to that line after considering each team's most recent games played and previous games played against that opponent. Also, adjustments are made after reading each team’s local newspapers to get a sense of what the coaches & players are thinking going into the game.

Since the oddsmaker’s ultimate goal is equally dividing the sports betting action, public perception and sportsbook betting patterns must be taken into account. For example, the public might have heavy betting interest week after week on a popular college football betting team such as USC. If an oddsmaker comes up with a preliminary line of USC -7, then an adjustment up to -7.5 or -8 would be made in response to the public’s expected USC bias.

The last step in the line-making process for each oddsmaker is taking one final look to determine whether or not the line "feels right." This is where common sense and past experience with how games are bet enters into the picture.

A round-table discussion among the 4-5 oddsmakers involved in making the line for each sport is then conducted and a consensus line is decided upon by the Odds Director before it is released to the sportsbooks. Of the 4-5 oddsmakers, generally the 2 most respected opinions are weighed more heavily by the Odds Director before he decides on the final line.

Why Sports Betting Lines Change

Once the opening line is released by LVSC, the individual sportsbooks decide if they want to make any adjustments before offering it to the public. Reasons for such adjustments include:

Experts working for the individual books having a strong opinion on the game

Individual books having players who consistently bet with certain tendencies (such as an extreme bias toward favorites or toward a certain popular team like USC)

The purpose of these adjustments, like all line adjustments, is to more equally divide the betting action.

Once betting begins, sportsbooks can adjust the line at any time. In doing so they attempt to make more attractive the team that is getting less action. By moving the line, sportsbooks can influence how the public bets on a particular game.

For example, if the pointspread on a game is 7 and most of the money is coming in on the underdog (taking the +7), sportsbooks will then move the number down to 6 ½ to try and attract money on the favorite.

Moving the line is the oddsmaker's effort to balance betting action, and often times such moves can have a major impact on a bettor’s decision. Oddsmakers can also change the line depending on various event-related factors such as player injuries or weather. Obviously, if the line comes out a week ahead of the event (which is the case in football), there is much that could happen during the week leading up to the event that could affect the line. Oddsmakers have to determine if any changes are necessary and send out an "adjusted line."

“The main objective is that our clients get equal action on both sides,” Seba said. “We’re not trying to pick the team that covers the spread, we’re trying to make it a coin flip, a tough decision (for the bettor). If we’ve done that, we’ve done our job.”

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