Johnson, Syracuse have little trouble downing Gonzaga

NCAA Basketball Betting Lines

03/21/2010 - Buffalo, NY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Wes Johnson poured in a career-high 31 points and grabbed 14 rebounds, leading Syracuse to an 87-65 victory over Gonzaga in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

Andy Rautins scored 24 for Syracuse (30-4), which has won its first two games in the West Region by a combined 45 points. The top-seeded Orange beat Vermont by 23 in the first round and will next face Butler in the regional semifinals on Thursday in Salt Lake City.

Johnson, the Big East Player of the Year, and Rautins combined to make 9-of-15 three-point tries for Syracuse, which finished 12-of-25 from beyond the arc. The Orange again played without center Arinze Onuaku, who also sat out Friday's contest because of a quadriceps injury suffered during the Big East Tournament.

Syracuse will make its 19th appearance in the Sweet 16 and second straight. The Orange lost to Oklahoma last year in the regional semifinals.

Elias Harris scored 24 points for Gonzaga (27-7), which knocked off Florida State in the first round on Friday. West Coast Conference Player of the Year Matt Bouldin didn't score for the first 24 minutes and finished with only eight on Sunday after leading the Bulldogs with 17 in their first-round win.

Gonzaga opened a 13-8 lead early in the contest, but Syracuse answered with a 14-4 run. A three-pointer by Scoop Jardine gave the Orange a 15-13 edge and a shot from beyond the arc by Rautins capped the surge to make it 22-17 with 11 1/2 minutes left in the first half.

Harris followed with consecutive baskets for Gonzaga and Syracuse lost center Rick Jackson with 8:58 to play in the half when he picked up his third foul, but the Orange scored nine straight points without him and opened a 31-21 advantage on a Johnson jumper.

Gonzaga followed with a 7-1 spurt to draw within four, but the Orange responded with 11 in a row as part of a half-closing 15-4 run. Rautins ignited it with a jumper and Brandon Triche hit a three-pointer to give Syracuse its largest lead at that time at 46-30 before the Orange went into the break with a 47-32 margin.

Syracuse made 7-of-14 three-point tries in the opening 20 minutes, while Gonzaga was just 2-of-11 from beyond the arc. Triche scored all of his 13 points in the first half for the Orange.

The long-range accuracy continued for the Orange early in the second half, as Rautins made a trio of threes and added three free throws in a 13-2 run. His last make from the stripe gave Syracuse a 60-34 advantage with 16:20 to play.

Two free throws by Johnson extended the Orange cushion to 30, 71-41, with just over 12 minutes left. Syracuse cruised from there, leading by as many as 32.

Game Notes

Jardine finished with nine points and Jackson had five with nine rebounds for the Orange, who shot 54.7 percent overall...Robert Sacre scored 17 points for Gonzaga, which finished just 3-of-21 from three-point range....Bouldin made only 3-of-13 shots from the field and missed each of his six three-point attempts...Syracuse reached 30 wins for the first time since the 2002-03 squad finished 30-5 and captured the NCAA championship...Gonzaga fell to 0-5 when facing a top seed in the NCAA Tournament. The Bulldogs also lost to top-seeded North Carolina in last year's tourney...Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim notched his 44th career NCAA Tournament win, tying him with Jim Calhoun for seventh on the all-time list...This was the first meeting between the schools.

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Sportsbook Betting Lines

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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