How to Bet on College Basketball: The Basics

It's a chilly evening in December and you settle in to watch some college hoops, only to find out that tonight’s games aren't exactly marquee. Looking for a way to add some excitement to your evening, you might wonder how to bet on college basketball.

While you have plenty of experience picking games for your annual March Madness bracket, betting college basketball games during the regular season can add intrigue to matchups where you don't have a natural rooting interest. Fortunately for you, college basketball is one of the most popular forms of sports betting in the United States. With more than 350 schools and 32 conferences in Division 1 alone, there are 10s of games you can bet on any given night from mid-November through the end of the regular season in March. 

Not entirely sure where, how, or what to look for when placing your first college basketball bets? Then you’re in the right place, because we’re going to teach you precisely how to bet on NCAA basketball. Ready to place wagers confidently and have more fun doing it? Let’s dive in!

Choosing an Online College Basketball Betting Service

It’s 2021 and online college basketball betting has never been more popular or accessible for fans across the country. If you live in one of the dozen states that currently allow online sports betting, you have a range of options from traditional sportsbooks like Bovada, BetOnline and Bet365 to recent entrants like FanDuel, DraftKings, and Barstool. 

Any of these online betting sites will offer the popular basketball bets of moneyline vs point spread, and over/under options, and you don’t have to pick just one service. Many experienced bettors will have accounts at multiple online sports books so they can “shop” for lines they think provide more value than another. Plus, since these online sports books are competing against each other for the right to service your wagers, they run various promotions like guaranteed bets or deposit bonuses that you can choose from. 

Pick your favorite(s), make a deposit, and read on to learn exactly what you can bet on for each college basketball game. 

How to Bet on College Basketball: The Traditional Wagers

Now that you have identified where you can go to bet on college basketball, let’s look at what exactly you can bet on. With any college basketball game there are three basic ways you can take a financial position on the outcome: 1) bet the moneyline, 2) bet the point spread (also called the line), and 3) bet the over/under. You can also combine two or more of these options into a parlay bet, but we’re going to stay at a high level for this blog and focus on the three traditional wagers.

The Moneyline Bet

For the most basic bet, you can simply place a wager on any team you believe will win their basketball game outright. This is called a moneyline bet; whoever wins the game on the scoreboard wins the bet.  Of course not all teams are created equally, so when placing this bet you need to pay close attention to the specific odds on the game.  

For instance, you may see that Kentucky and Kansas are playing and the book lists the odds as: Kentucky (+125) v. Kansas (-140).  These +/- numbers are intimidating for new sports bettors, but don’t let them scare you! Simple math shows how these work and as you gain more betting experience, these numbers will help you identify value and distinguish good bets from bad. 

Let’s use our Kentuck vs. Kansas example. Any team that has a “plus” in front of their odds indicates they are the underdog for the game. If Kentucky is +125, this simply means that for every $10 you wager you will earn $12.50 in profit if your bet wins (or if you wager $100 you receive $125). Any team with a “minus” in front of their odds indicates they are favored in the game. Since Kansas at -140 is the favorite, you’ll have to wager $14 to receive $10 in profit (or wager $140 to receive $100). 

Simple enough, right? Let’s add another wrinkle and look at moneyline vs spread.

The Point Spread Bet

Now if you are interested in betting on a game with a heavy favorite (or a big underdog), you can improve your position by betting against the spread, or “ATS” in betting parlance.  When you bet the point spread, instead of simply betting on who will win on the scoreboard, you are picking either team to “cover” their spread. A favorite can cover with a winning margin that exceeds the spread, or an underdog can cover by losing by less than the spread (or winning outright). 

Let’s take the Kentucky-Kansas game above as an example, which you can think of as its own market. In this case, the market makers believe Kansas is a -140 favorite to win the game outright, which might translate to something like a three point spread against their opponent, Kentucky. Maybe Kansas is playing at home, or Kentucky lost a key player to injury; whatever the reason, the market makers like Kansas and you have a choice: bet Kansas to win the game by more than 3 points, or bet Kentucky to not lose by that margin. 

Your sports book of choice will articulate this spread as Kentucky (+3.0) v. Kansas (-3.0). Just like the moneyline example, any team with a “plus” in front of their number is the underdog while any team with a “minus” in front of their number is the favorite. This simply indicates that if you want to place a college basketball ATS bet for this matchup, you can select Kansas to win the game by more than three points. On the flip side, if you think Kentucky will lose but keep it closer than three points you can bet the Wildcats +3. If the game ends with Kansas as exactly a three-point winner, your bet will “push” and you’ll get your money back. 

Now, you might be very confident that Kentucky will win the game outright, in which case the moneyline bet will payout more than the point spread bet. But getting 3 points gives you a margin of error and can improve your chances of winning the bet. In our Kentucky v. Kansas example, the payout on your point spread wager will generally be -110 for both teams (meaning if you wager $10 on either Kentucky or Kansas with points, you will win $9.10 if your bet hits).

It’s always a consideration, and as you study betting strategy you’ll learn how to make the best decision between a moneyline bet and the point spread. In later articles we will dig deeper into the potential value associated with betting the moneyline on a college basketball game or betting college basketball ATS, but to simplify things you will generally get closer odds when betting against the spread. 

The Over/Under Bet

The final traditional wager for college basketball betting is over/under betting.  For this type of wager your book will set a total number of points they believe will be scored in the game by both teams, perhaps 139.5 points in our Kentucky v. Kansas example. This number represents the combined score of both teams at the end of the game, regardless of who wins. 

Betting the O/U is easy: you can either bet that both teams will score less than 139.5 points, or more than 139.5 points. O/U bets can be whole numbers as well, meaning that you can push just like a point spread bet. The odds here are similar to the moneyline odds where the payout on your wager will generally be in the neighborhood of -110 for either side. Keep in mind that it doesn’t matter who wins if you bet the O/U, but you can find value here if you know where to look. For example, in big games like the Final Four, casual bettors tend to favor the over because it’s more exciting to cheer for offense (unless you’re a dad, because they know defense wins championships). When the public bets on a big game, there tends to be a lot of volume on the popular side, which can artificially inflate the total. Betting “sharps” will take the under in these circumstances, a technique they call “fading the public.”

These are the basics of how to bet on college basketball, whether you are placing a moneyline bet, a bet against the spread, or a bet on the over/under. As sports betting becomes more popular, the books are beginning to offer all three of these common college basketball bets in the first half of a game, as well as in-game betting where the lines and odds change in accordance with game flow. We’ll cover in-game and partial market college basketball betting in a future blog post. But first, stick with us as we take a more detailed look at strategies and considerations for winning more college basketball bets. 

Good luck my friends and as always, be responsible with your gambling and never gamble with money that you cannot afford to lose!