On Sports Betting: For Betting Value, Look To Non-Marquee College Basketball Games

It looked like a perfect spot for Vegas Golden Knights bettors.

The team was at home in the comfortable confines of T-Mobile Arena. It had likely shrugged off a loss 48 hours earlier to the New York Rangers. And Marc-Andre Fleury was back in the net after time off for the death of his father.

The price, in the -200 to -210 range on Tuesday, was steep but under the circumstances not unreasonable.

All the conditions were ripe for a solid VGK win.

And what happened? In fact, the game played out as scripted with Fleury making 28 saves and the Golden Knights defeating the Chicago Blackhawks, 5-1. It was also a payday for puck line bettors willing to gamble at around +120. Only bettors who had over 6.5 goals or a parlay with over 6.5 walked away disappointed.

Fleury after the game: “I was away for a while. It’s always nice to get that feeling when I get back on the ice.”

Obviously, it doesn’t always work this way. Hockey is, as one handicapper put it, the “least predictive” of sports. In other words, anything can happen when 12 players on skates are chasing or trying to stop a 1-inch thick, 6-ounce slab of vulcanized rubber that’s zipping around a slippery surface.

So if you cashed a ticket, congratulate yourself. You can definitely buy lunch next time we see you in the book. One of those BLTs on sourdough toast with some home fries on the side will be fine, thank you.

But for the casual or serious bettor was that really the best bet on a humdrum Tuesday?

Well, if you put aside the NBA, where anything can and will happen, there’s college hoops. And there you’ll often find a potential titanium mine of opportunities, usually in the non-marquee matchups.

Just a few from Tuesday:

— Temple, -11, throttled what appears to be a not-very-good St. Joe’s team, 108-61.

— BYU, -8, blasted UNR, 75-42. The Wolf Pack scored only 22 points in the first half and another 20 in the second half.

— And mercy me, Notre Dame, -19.5, beat Detroit Mercy, 110-71. (Unfortunately for the Titans, who were outscored 61-38 in the second half, there’s no mercy rule in college basketball.)

Do we have the benefit of hindsight here? You bet. But a little digging around college basketball matchups, as any serious handicapper will tell you, can pay big dividends.

Need further evidence? On Wednesday, a handicapper on an afternoon radio show dedicated to sports betting made San Diego -2.5 vs. Cal State Fullerton the advertising-sponsored “play of the day.” We tune into this show occasionally, and it’s safe to say their record for the “play of the day” is spotty at best. But in this case, the Toreros delivered as promised, defeating the Titans, 66-54.

In fact, the afternoon radio “play of the day” delivered for a second straight day on Thursday with its selection of the St. Louis Blues at -115 vs. the Golden Knights. St. Louis prevailed, 4-2, a nice payday for Blues bettors, those who played the puck line and over 5.5.

VGK coach Gerard Gallant after the game: “Lot of missed chances, but we were loose in the second. That cost (us) the hockey game.”

No kidding.

But how about college hoops the same day?

— A strong Iowa team, +4, defeated Iowa State outright, 84-68.

— Northern Iowa, -6, easily rolled over Grand Canyon, 82-58.

— West Virginia, -15.5, blew out Austin Peay, 84-53.

Again, while we have the benefit of hindsight here, there is the very real possibility of finding exploitable mismatches in college hoops.

It wasn’t a mismatch but there might have been some value on the VGK at +150 on Friday the Thirteenth as they traveled to play the Dallas Stars at American Airlines Arena in downtown Dallas. In fact, the Golden Knights won, 3-2, in overtime as Gallant put Max Pacioretty, the team’s scoring leader, and Mark Stone on the ice to start the overtime, according to The Associated Press.

“They are two good hockey players and I want to get them out there. We tried something better and it worked,” Gallant said after the game.

It definitely worked for bettors holding tickets at +150.

There was a parade of college hoops on Saturday. You could have started your day watching Oregon, +3.5, defeat Michigan, 71-70, in overtime and ended it some 10 hours later when Gonzaga, +2, beat Arizona, 84-80.

Meanwhile, while around 17,000 people were watching Kamaru Usman, around -190, bloody Colby Covington, +150, and Amanda Nunes, -455, defeat Germaine De Randamie, +350, in UFC 245 at T-Mobile Arena, there was more hardcourt action generating few headlines but still paying off for bettors.

— Memphis, +6, defeated Tennessee outright in a score that looked like something from a junior high game, 51-47. (The total was 139.)

— Rutgers, +1.5, handily beat a ranked Seton Hall team, 68-48.

— Perennial powerhouse Kansas, -23 toyed with lesser-known Missouri-Kansas City, 98-57.

And so it goes. The crowds were out again on Sunday and there were deafening roars from the race and sports book and nearby spots on every big play or missed big play. The Raiders, -6.5, were a certainty to win their last game in Oakland, right? Well, the lowly Jacksonville Jaguars disrupted the farewell party with a 20-16 outright win. The No. 1 pick in the Westgate Las Vegas SuperContest, the Los Angeles Rams were -1 vs. the Dallas Cowboys, who had lost three in a row. But it was the Cowboys who walked away with the win, 44-21. Ironically, the least popular contest pick was the Baltimore Ravens, who have all the look of a Super Bowl team. The Ravens, -15, easily rolled over the New York Jets on Thursday, 42-21.

But in college hoops, where winning tickets pay out just like the most watched contested NFL games, there were some perhaps predictable results:

— South Florida, -10.5, rolled over Drexel, 81-61.

— Bradley, -5, was all over Georgia Southern, 81-51.

— However, an unheralded Wofford team traveled to Chapel Hill and toppled North Carolina, 68-64. The Terriers were +11.5 and closed at +525 on the money line after opening as high as +1000.

Hopefully by now, you see the point. Diligent homework in little-heralded college basketball games can have impressive results.

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So what’s next?

— Monday Night Football will get plenty of attention with the New Orleans Saints -9 hosting the Indianapolis Colts. The total is 46.5.

— The Vegas Golden Knights, who defeated the Vancouver Canucks on Sunday, 6-3, will host the Minnesota Wild on Tuesday.

— After a long layoff, the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels host the Pacific Tigers on Wednesday.

— The first of 39 college football bowl games kicks off Friday at 11 a.m. PT with Charlotte vs. Buffalo in the Bahamas Bowl. Utah State meets Kent State later in the day in the Frisco Bowl. The Las Vegas Bowl is on tap for Saturday with Boise State vs. Washington.

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