Syracuse snaps losing streak to Louisville

NCAA Basketball Betting Lines

02/13/2012 - Louisville, KY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - C.J. Fair scored 13 points, the last two on a go-ahead layup, and No. 2 Syracuse escaped with a 52-51 win Monday night to snap a seven-game losing streak to No. 19 Louisville.

Fair's layup, after Dion Waiters drove the lane and found him beneath the basket, capped a 6-0 run with 2:11 remaining in the game.

Neither team scored after that. The Cardinals went cold over the final 3:38 after Chane Behanan's tip-in ended a 15-2 run to give them a five-point lead.

Fab Melo added 11 points and the Orange (26-1, 13-1 Big East) beat Louisville for the first time since a 79-66 victory at home on February 18, 2006.

Behanan had 16 points to pace the Cardinals (20-6, 8-5) and Chris Smith scored 10. Peyton Siva was scoreless after leading all players with eight points in the first half.

Louisville had a six-game overall winning streak snapped, while Syracuse won its sixth in a row since falling to Notre Dame last month.

The Cardinals, after roaring back, just couldn't finish the Orange off.

Trailing 44-36 with 7 1/2 minutes left, they scored five straight points on a dunk by Behanan and a three by Smith to spark their 15-2 run. Later, Gorgui Dieng's three-point play tied the game and Smith knocked down a three from the left side in transition to give Louisville a 49-46 lead.

The Cardinals pushed their advantage to 51-46 on Behanan's tip, which followed a turnover by Syracuse's Kris Joseph, who fumbled the ball out of bounds, and a missed three-point try by Smith.

Brandon Triche hit a jumper at the other end and Melo made two free throws, drawing the Orange within a point and setting up Fair's go-ahead layup.

Earlier, Louisville took a 24-22 lead into the locker room despite going more than 10 minutes without a field goal near the end of the low-scoring first half.

Siva's three-pointer gave the Cardinals a 12-5 lead, but they went without a made field goal until Jared Swopshire's turnaround one-hander in the lane made it 21-20 with 1:31 left in the half.

Game Notes

Triche had eight points for Syracuse and Dieng scored nine for Louisville with a game-high 10 rebounds...The teams will meet again for their regular season finale on March 3 at Syracuse...Louisville still leads the all-time series 13-5.

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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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