2022 College Basketball Sports Picks

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With March just one turn of the calendar away, the college basketball season is starting the final push to an exciting end. If you're making college basketball sports picks, figuring out the trends and identifying the underdogs can help you make smarter bets.

Here are some college basketball sports picks to consider before the madness begins.

Trends

With the Transfer Portal and NBA fundamentally changing the college basketball landscape, it can be tricky to identify sustainable trends.

• Volatility: One of the best sports picks of the 2022 college basketball season seems to be betting on the top-ranked team to lose. The 2022 college basketball season has seen several teams climb to the top of the rankings, only to suffer a loss, often to unranked opponent, shortly thereafter. With a relatively large sample size, it appears that making sports picks that reflect this volatility can help you find value when placing bets on the conference and national tournaments. Smart sports pick betters will look to hedge their bets on the favorites with many smaller bets on underdogs to help them account for the biggest upsets.
• Continuity: Another trend to emerge from the 2022 college basketball season is the power of continuity. Teams with long-tenured coaching staffs and/or starters with many years in the program have been covering the spread more frequently than those with new coaching staffs and/or newcomers in the starting lineup. When making sports picks on games involving teams with continuity versus those with fresh faces, continuity appears to be tipping the scales in favor of veteran programs.

Underdogs

Picking underdogs is one of the most thrilling parts of making college basketball sports picks. When you're looking at teams with long odds this March and April, look for teams with these characteristics:

• DVOA: Defense-adjusted Value Over Average ranks among the most powerful analytic tools to help quantify a team or player's performances. When looking for underdogs, taking a casual glance at the DVOA data available on many sports betting websites can help you identify teams with seemingly poor records, but objectively impressive resumes. For instance, if a lower-seeded team is playing a higher-seeded team, looking at the difference between each squad's DVOA can help you decide when to bet big money on a longshot.
• Streaks: Some of the best college basketball underdogs will come into the championship season with big winning streaks. These winning streaks might have been amassed against relatively weak opponents, but the momentum of winning can help these underdogs take down the favorites when it matters most.

Lastly, companies such as Official Picks can help make the process of choosing your sport picks easier.

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2 February 2022