Top-ranked Gators hit the SEC road

NCAA Basketball Betting Lines

01/27/2007 - Auburn, AL (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The top-ranked Florida Gators continue their feverish run through the SEC, as they travel to Alabama this weekend to battle the Auburn Tigers from the Beard-Eaves Coliseum.

This is the third straight SEC West foe for Florida, which moved to 5-0 in league play with this week's 70-67 win over Mississippi State. Since a loss to Florida State on December 3rd, the Gators have strung together 11 straight victories to move to 18-2 overall.

The Tigers are facing their seventh top-10 team this season and their second ranked opponent in a row, after routing 12th-ranked Alabama this week, 81-57. The victory evened Auburn's league mark at 3-3 and pushed the team to 13-8 overall.

Auburn leads the all-time series with Florida, 86-65, but the Gators have closed the gap a bit with seven straight wins over the Tigers coming into this matchup.

Florida struggled to get a three-point win over Mississippi State this week, as the team shot just .417 from the floor and turned the ball over 15 times. Corey Brewer led the team to victory with a game-high 20 points. Florida trailed at the break by four points, but went on an early run in the second stanza to regain the momentum and earn the win. Taurean Green and Joakim Noah added 11 and 10 points, respectively, while Al Horford just missed a double- double with nine points and 14 rebounds. The Gators have been a much more potent offensive squad on the season, averaging 82.3 ppg, while leading the nation in field-goal percentage (.542). All five starters are averaging double digits, led by Green's 13.5 ppg. Brewer and Noah follow at 12.8 ppg each, with Horford (11.8 ppg) and Lee Humphrey (10.4 ppg) getting into the act as well. Noah and Horford provide the muscle on the glass, combining for just over 17 rebounds per game.

The Tigers are a decent offensive team as well, averaging 73.3 ppg, on a steady .452 shooting. The team also boasts of five double-digit averages, proof of serious scoring depth. Quan Prowell and Rasheem Barrett lead the way with 12.4 ppg each. They are followed closely by Frank Tolbert (12.2 ppg), Korvotney Barber (12.0 ppg) and Josh Dollard (11.6 ppg). Dollard leads the team on the boards at 7.3 rpg, but gets plenty of help from Prowell (7.0 rpg) and Barber (6.3 rpg). Auburn dispensed of Alabama this week thanks to a crushing 25-7 run to open up the second half. The victory halted a seven-game win streak for Alabama in the series, as four Tigers finished in double figures. Barber led the way with 18 points, Tolbert came off the bench to tally 17, followed by Dollard, who had 16. Prowell notched a double-double with 14 points and 10 rebounds, as Auburn shot .576 from the floor in the game, including a ridiculous .679 in the second half (19-of-28).

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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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