We are about to enter one of the more interesting parts of the year in college basketball, with the new season just beginning to take a significant form.
At this time of the year in college basketball, the schedule is a jumble. There is a smattering of semi-important pre-January conference games. You can expect them to be played with substantial intensity.
But when teams play nonconference games on their own floor, those contests can generally be divided into meetings between regional "rivals" (say, UC Irvine vs. UCLA) and contests between intersectional foes (say, Toledo vs. South Carolina). Many of the nonconference games (say, Jacksonville vs. Florida) aren't even on the line.
Then, there are dozens of games played at neutral venues, such as the tournaments in New York, Hawaii, Alaska, and Puerto Rico. That's because many students are no longer present at campus sites due to semester or quarter break, or due to a holiday-season recess. Also, many teams host their own weekend exhibition "tournaments," bringing in three nonconference foes, with the idea being to collect a few bucks from the public and to give coaches a chance to develop their players and meld their teams for the upcoming tougher games once the conference season begins in earnest after the first of the year.
Thus, with teams playing all over the place and against foes they don't normally face, you can see some pretty strange matchups, as well as some very telling games, especially when top-50 teams meet on neutral floors.
From a handicapping perspective, there is a way to approach this potpourri of contests - at least for me.
First of all, remember one of my basic rules:
Don't guess at ballgames. Yes, I know that every wager embodies a guess. However, if you're wagering to win, and not just for the action, you should at least do a little "homework" about the teams first, in order to give yourself a few edges in the game. I assure you, the oddsmaker and his staff have done a little homework. Be sure that you make an educated guess.
Second, and this goes hand in hand with the guideline above,
feel free to "pass" on dozens of the games, especially if you are distracted. The holiday period can be fraught with distractions and exogenous variables - that is, elements such as shopping, traveling, hosting, decorating, cooking, and, of course, drinking. If you are substantially distracted from your normal handicapping routine, or if you're working with only partial information, don't hesitate to pass that day. There will be plenty more games.
Third, when the power teams host inferior foes in holiday tourneys and/or on the power team's own floor, keep in mind this adage when analyzing the visitor:
If you can't shoot, you can't win.
Of course, this is overly simplistic, but not by much, and you should keep it in mind, anyway, for these reasons. In nonconference games, visiting teams
tend to get fewer breaks from the referees than they do in conference games. And with no conference second meeting to worry about, the host team can pour it on, if it is able to. Remember, many weak pre-conference visitors were chosen to be visitors because they offered the high prospect of a home-team victory.
Of course, many of these visitors turn out to be feistier than the home team had intended. That is the nature of sports. But, upon further review, the teams that turn out to be feisty foes instead of handy victims are the ones with the skill, poise, and polish to either hit open shots or create open shots.
If a team can't shoot on the road, and it's facing a quality foe early in the season, the scoring margin tends to grow during the game, especially as the superior team gets a few put-backs or a few layups at the other end off desperation misses in the closing minutes.
Don't get me wrong, quickness, coaching style, defense, depth, and court intelligence all still apply in intersectional games. And many a host team finds out that it has bitten off more than it can chew, or is flat after its players have just taken their finals, or ends up playing in front of half-empty stands. Plenty of road underdogs cover.
But if you are going to buck the favorite in an intersectional hoops game early in the season, you better have some good shooters on your side, because there don't figure to be easy hoops or marginal calls going your way. And your wager could be in big trouble once your team falls behind, especially in the second half.
With so many of college basketball's dominating big men going early to the NBA, shooting and shot selection have become more important. Points can come easily in college hoops if a team has players who can hit the open trey or if it has a powerful player who has moves inside and can convert from the free-throw line.
For my money, I don't want to side with a nonconference visitor at holiday time unless I know that visitor well enough to be confident that it can still score with the odds conveniently stacked against it from the get-go. If you're wagering to
win consistently, and not just for the action in the Christmas-New Year's holiday period, keep in mind a simple principle before jumping on that visitor at a strange locale:
If your team can't shoot on a strange floor, it is going to have a tough time winning for you. 
Chuck Sippl ([email protected]) is the senior editor of The Gold Sheet, the first word in sports handicapping for nearly 50 years. The amazingly compact Gold Sheet features analysis of every football and basketball game, exclusive insider reports, widely followed Power Ratings, and a Special Ticker of key injuries and team chemistry. Look for The Gold Sheet on newsstands. Or, you can obtain a complimentary copy by calling The Gold Sheet at (800) 798-GOLD (4653), and be sure to mention that you read about it in Card Player. You can check out The Gold Sheet on the web at www.goldsheet.com.
