Online NCAA College Basketball Betting
While college basketball isn’t exactly as popular as NBA, the NCAA games attract the attention of numerous sports enthusiasts from all over the United States. In fact, the upper Midwest and North Carolina are positively crazy about this sport, which may be attributed to strong programs at Kentucky, Louisville and Indiana as well as the amazing marketing of the Men’s Division I Basketball Championship, also known as March Madness. As a result, many quality online sports betting sites provide their customers with numerous betting opportunities related to NCAA basketball, which means that if you’re a fan you won’t have to worry about incomplete event coverage or strict wagering limits that haunt the enthusiasts of so many niche sports.
best sites to bet on ncaa basketball online
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Ways to Bet on NCAA Basketball Online
As you’d expect, betting on NCAA Basketball isn’t all that different from betting on NBA – if you’ve ever wagered real money on an American basketball game, odds are high you’ll feel right at home with any sportsbook offering NCAA lines. Most bets fall into one out of three major categories: point spread, money line or totals. The wagers can be placed pre-game or even during the events, with the best sites updating their odds and propositions to reflect the action going down in the arena. While many inexperienced bettors start by wagering on the money line due to its simplicity, the point spread remains the most popular type of bet as it allows you to stick with your favorite team regardless of the odds.
NCAA Point Spread Betting
As mentioned above, point spread bets even out the odds between the favorites and the underdogs by handicapping the team that is expected to win. Consequently, each time you consider placing a point spread bet you should check how many points will be given to the underdogs and taken from the favorites. The odds will typically be close to -110, so you’ll be able to win $10 for each $11 you put at risk. While some sports betting sites that run a reduced juice program might offer you a better deal, usually the numbers will be similar to this:
Syracuse -5.5 -110
Stanford +5.5 -110
In this case, Syracuse team is the favorite and as such has to give up 5.5 points, which means that in order for any point spread wagers placed on Syracuse to win, the team would have to win the game by six points or more. Betting on Stanford on the other hand would result in a payout even if the team lost the game as long as they weren’t more than 5 points behind by the end of the match.
Money Line Betting
While not as popular as point spread betting, wagering on the money line still accounts for a substantial percentage of traffic going through NCAA-friendly sportsbooks. With this type of bet, receiving the payout depends solely on whether the team you picked won or not – the lack of handicaps means that wagering on the favorite is definitely going to increase your success rate. However, the overall profitability should be determined by taking the potential payout into account. Most money lines use $100 as the basis for calculating your payoff. This means that wagering $100 on a line marked with a plus symbol is going to grant you a predetermined amount of money. Conversely, if you opt to go for a line marked with a minus symbol, you’ll have to pay more for a chance to win $100.
Florida -230
Harvard +170
In this example, betting on Florida requires you to risk $230 for a chance to win $100, which means that if you bet $460 and your team wins, you’ll receive $200. Betting on Harvard on the other hand requires you to put only $100 at risk and gives you a shot at claiming a rather juicy $170 payout.
Over/Under Betting
Over/Under bets are often referred to as totals and are quite different from the other common bet types described above in that they allow you to wager on the score of both teams instead of one side’s performance. Consequently, winning this type of bet requires you to predict whether the total number of points scored during a match will be higher or lower than the number posted by the sports betting site. Going for the lower value is known as betting the Under, while aiming for the higher score is called betting on the Over. Please note that while betting the Under is often considered to be the safer option, over/under bets are pretty much luck based, which means that they are quite far from being the primary source of income of professional bettors.
Parlay Betting
Betting on the outcome of a single game may be quite lucrative and fun, but if you’re looking for some high-risk, high-reward NCAA action you might want to give parlay bets a try. Unlike the traditional bets described above, parlay bets are composed a number of single-game wagers of various types. The difference between placing a parlay bet and placing a number of standard wagers in order to receive a parlay payout you’ll have to cover all of its parts – if you make a single mistake, your money stays with the site. However, the payouts are considerably larger than in the case of numerous money line or point spread wagers – two team parlays usually pay 13/5, while some of the massive parlays offered by the largest sportsbooks might pay as much as 300/1 or even more.
Futures Betting
While the wager types listed above give you an opportunity to check your handicapping skills when it comes to predicting the outcome of future games, many sites allow the adventurous punters to bet on the general results of major events, such as the March Madness. Just like in the case of parlays, betting on NCAA futures is more risky than wagering on specific games and offers a higher return on your investment if your predictions were right.