When Good/Great Programs Have a Down Year
I think this is the important gambling point I am going to take away from college basketball this year. With most legitimate players having a shelf-life of one to two years, it seems that college basketball programs are more susceptible to year-by-year fluctuations in talent than virtually any other gambling related sport. Consequently, even good or really great programs can have occasional off years.
The obvious examples of this in the 2009-2010 CB season were Connecticut and North Carolina. Both had records around .500 which are an anomaly to say the least and they were both train wrecks against the spread, North Carolina was 9-19 and UConn at 12-18.
I think this relates to the overall issue that when betting sports its preferable to abandon preconceptions as much as possible and be a cold judge of actual talent. Vegas gradually revalued both teams during the year, but this was a slow process, and gamblers who had the nuts to go against name recognition obviously did pretty damn well.
This should be a topic of conversation on this Blog at the beginning of the next CB season.
