Illini and Hoosiers duke it out in Big Ten brawl

NCAA Basketball Betting Lines

02/09/2012 - Bloomington, IN (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Illinois Fighting Illini are hoping a win tonight at No. 23 Indiana will give them a boost as they come down the home stretch in what has been a fairly odd season thus far.

Illinois is 16-7 on the year, but the bulk of those wins came against lesser competition during a non-conference slate that really only featured a couple of tough bouts. Since the start of Big Ten Conference play, the Illini are an even 5-5, and going back to the middle of December, they are just 6-7 in their last 13 games. Illinois dropped a 74-70 decision at home to Northwestern on Monday night, and coach Bruce Weber's club comes into this clash sporting a 2-3 record in true road tilts.

Indiana was one of the surprise stories during the first couple of months of the 2011-12 season, as coach Tom Crean's team jumped out to a 12-0 start, which included an upset of No. 1 Kentucky on December 10. Since the start of conference action however, the Hoosiers have split a dozen games, and have alternated wins and losses over the last few weeks. IU is coming off a 78-61 victory at Purdue, and the team will try to improve upon its stellar 13-1 home mark with a win tonight.

The all-time series between Illinois and Indiana is knotted at 83-83, but the Illini have won five of the last six meetings.

Illinois isn't the most explosive offensive team around, but the Illini certainly hold their own in netting 66.8 ppg on 44.9 percent field goal efficiency, which includes a 32.1 percent showing from three-point range. Defensively, the team allows just 61.3 ppg with foes converting a mere 41.0 percent of their total shots, but 35.7 percent of their long-range tries. UI boasts three double-digit scorers in the form of Brandon Paul (15.1 ppg, 5.0 rpg, 3.1 apg), Leonard Meyers (13.3 ppg, 8.0 rpg) and D.J. Richardson (12.2 ppg), but only Meyers, the team's starting center, is shooting at what anyone would consider an acceptable rate (.582). Paul and Meyers both hit for more than 20 points in the recent loss to Northwestern, with the latter also grabbing nine boards and blocking a pair of shots for good measure. Unfortunately for the Illini, even a 54.2 percent shooting performance couldn't offset a sizzling 60.4 percent effort put forth by the Wildcats, who scored 36 points in the paint, compared to 24 for Illinois.

Indiana is clearly the better of these two teams in terms of offensive efficiency, as the Hoosiers lead the Big Ten in scoring offense (78.5 ppg), field goal percentage (.495) and three-point FG percentage (.431). The club's defensive effort yields an average of 65.7 ppg, and opponents are hitting their field goal attempts just 41.9 percent of the time, and IU owns favorable margins in both rebounding (+3.9) and turnovers (+0.9). Freshman Cody Zeller (15.1 ppg, 6.4 rpg, 34 steals, 33 blocks) has been Indiana's most consistent performer this season, and he is one of four players currently averaging double digits in the scoring column. Christian Watford (12.1 ppg, 5.6 rpg), Jordan Hulls (12.1 ppg, 3.3 apg) and Victor Oladipo (10.5 ppg, 5.3 rpg, 37 steals) have all contributed, and Oladipo was high man for the Hoosiers in the recent win over Purdue, as he went 6-of-14 from the floor and 10-of-12 at the foul line to finish with 23 points. He also wound up with eight of the team's 53 rebounds in the game, and Zeller tallied 16 points and eight boards as well. Indiana shot just 41.8 percent from the field, but held the Boilermakers to 29.6 percent while claiming a 29-14 edge in points from the charity stripe.

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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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