College Basketball How To Handicap Conference Tournaments

For sports handicappers testing their luck at March Madness betting for the first time, handicapping college hoops before the world’s biggest playoff tournament can seem rather daunting. Rather then just picking teams whose names sound awesome, you can now pick teams based on skill level. Essentially, in February, the regular season for college basketball betting comes to an end, and the conference tournaments begin. Here is a guide to handicapping college conference tournaments.

When it comes to conference tournaments, they are very similar to March Madness, in the sense that every team in each conference is seeded. Essentially, the first place team at the end of the regular season will face the 12^th or 16^th place team, depending on the amount of schools in the conference. In order to pick the right teams, what we enjoy doing, is looking at how a team has performed heading into the conference tournament. Many teams, will overlook the conference tournament, because they know they have sealed a birth in March Madness. Meanwhile, other teams will look to disprove their critics and put on an NBA caliber performance in the Conference tournament, to provide them selves with momentum going into March Madness.

By looking at the last handful of games leading into the Conference tournaments, you can see which teams may be up emotionally for the tournament, and which may be losing focus. For example, last season, the Texas Longhorns put together a strong regular season, but overlooked the Big 12 Conference tournament. As a result, they got killed by Kansas in the conference tournament finals, and then quickly exited March Madness. This season, UNC appears to be taking Texas spot as a team overlooking their competition, as they choked against Duke last week.