St. Mary's line

[Matunuck]

S. Mary's opens as a 16 1/2 point favorite. This is a tough spot for us, but I will take the points.

[URI96]

Seems like a lot

[reef]

Agreed, I am on URI plus the points, I trust Hurley keeping us in the game

[Rhody72]

I hope that URI doesn't get swept away by rhe beauty of the SMC campus - one of the most beautiful.

[Brhode Island]

16.5 is a lot, but I'm not touching this one. Cross country flights scare me away.

Love Cincinnati only laying 6 at home tonight though.

[Blue Man]

I'll wait for the line to creep up because I think it'll get higher - not a lot of games tonight, and SMC is kind of a big name. but even if it drops to 12.5 I still like Rhody and points.

Cross country trips are weird, but I don't think home court is a factor due to the break, and we could catch SMC in a trap game scenario with 2 ESPN games looming - even though they're against yale and harvard.

[Rhodymob05]

heard the line is -19.5 now HOW THE HELL?

[spookydog]

heard the line is -19.5 now HOW THE HELL?

That's what I am seeing the line at as well.

The moneyline is +3000. Hmmmm...So Tempting.

[Blue Man]

i just booked them at +20. Ohio State couldn't cover that high earlier in the year...this team, even without aaman, is buying into their style of play. improved everywhere. I'm not saying they're gonna win...I'm not saying they're not either. But I am saying they're not getting blown out.

[URIGONZO]

You have to love them +20. That is a huge number to cover.

[HobbyBurley]

In at 19.5

[Andrew]

I'm so tempted to create an account simply for this game. The line is hovering around 19-20... We should have no problem covering that.

[EZBuckets]

I really can't believe we are 20 pt dogs!?

10 is totally understandable.

[bigappleram]

vegas is rarely wrong, and almost never 20 pts off! that makes me hate our chances of being competitive even tho i agree on paper that line seems way high. but they get paid to see things we dont.

[ATPTourFan]

Wow, amazing. 20 pts is way too high. Sure hope I'm right! (not that I gamble, but I'd like to see you guys win in addition to the Rams tonight.)

[ballallday]

lose by 20? nooooo waaaaaay

Not a Hurley coached team with this many games under their belt.

No way. Hell, I say we win. Go Rhody all day long

[Rhodymob05]

VT beat us by 19 which was our biggest defeat, st marys is not even close to our best opponent, at home or not it shouldnt be +20 SCREW VEGAS

[RF1]

Vegas was right.

[reef]

And I was wrong !!! I did tease URI to 25 in a couple of bets though. I really thought we would cover 20

I did hit under 137 in Cinci and NM great game

[ramster]

Vegas is never right or wrong.
It's very much like supply and demand theory.
There should be an equal number of people on each side of the 20 point spread.
Just as much money (not necessarily people) is above 20 points as is below 20 points.
Think about that...........half the money thought St Mary's would beat us by more than 20 points

[spookydog]

There should be an equal number of people on each side of the 20 point spread.
Just as much money (not necessarily people) is above 20 points as is below 20 points.

That is the case most of the time, but not necessarily all the time. Sometimes the casinos like to gamble as well. If a spread around the Vegas casinos for a certain game is +10 for team x, but they think team x is going to win by 15+, they will make the spread 14 in hopes of getting more money on the underdogs. Doesn't happen too often, but it does occur.

[Blue Man]

That just sucked.

[bigappleram]

ramster, what i meant by that is that if vegas thought the game would play close to a 20 pt spread then that would likely be what happens....meaning URI wasnt ever going to win the game in the eyes of vegas. vegas was not putting us as 20 pt dogs to have us play the entire game in a nail biter, they knew the kind of game it would be and it turned out to be true, as it usually does.

[ramster]

There should be an equal number of people on each side of the 20 point spread.
Just as much money (not necessarily people) is above 20 points as is below 20 points.

That is the case most of the time, but not necessarily all the time. Sometimes the casinos like to gamble as well. If a spread around the Vegas casinos for a certain game is +10 for team x, but they think team x is going to win by 15+, they will make the spread 14 in hopes of getting more money on the underdogs. Doesn't happen too often, but it does occur.

Exactly,
If there is too much money on one side or the other the spread adjusts.
An interesting spread to me is for tonight's PC Brown Game at Brown. PC only favored by 10 points. The mightly Big East that is going off to start their own Power Catholic League have Council, Dunn and the transfer kid from Arizona all eligible against a 3-6 Brown team.
I'd be surprised if that stays at 10.

[Gonebarongone]

The red flag was that the spread moved so much over the course of the day. The one thing Vegas hates is moving the number. Usually, they will try to fiddle with the juice before moving the line. Nothing casinos hate more than moving the line from +16.5 to plus 20 and having SMC win by 18. Then you are paying both sides of a lot of bets. This usually means that pro money came in hard on the initial lines. Hard enough to move it 3.5 points. That was a screaming signal that Rhody was in for a beatdown.

[SGreenwell]

The weird thing to me was that the line kept moving up, but I'm still not sure why the Rams were 15 or 16 point dogs to begin with. Have there been studies done about coast-to-coast travel and the effect on basketball teams? I know that for NFL teams, it's generally not good for the team doing the traveling, with the worst being when a West Coast team has to travel to play at an East Coast team and the game is at 1 p.m. EST.

[rodfromcranston]

URI is 8-11 in games played in California.
Not a great record, but 8 wins.
So, they have won games going East to West, in the past.

[bigappleram]

IMO its a combination of trends and also expert insights on every team and every game. that line smelled fishy b/c it was so high, and indeed it was. they wanted ppl to take URI b/c they knew it was highly likely we would get waxed. did they have the insight to know SMC would destroy us inside? a concern none of us voiced pre-game any more so than for previous games given our limited front court. sure we knew we likely would get beat inside, but 42-17? IMO vegas didn't and doesn't generally get lucky, they know the numbers better than you and me. they build tower after tower in vegas off of their bets.

the PC game tonight is another fishy line, +10 seems very low on paper. begging you to take PC....will brown hang around? at +10 they have to be basically down 2-4 pts in the last minute and survive all the FTs to cover. how will brown hang with PC for 35 minutes when we couldn't?

this is of course what makes it fun!

[SGreenwell]

Re: Brown vs. PC, 10 seems way, WAY too low, especially given how much PC waxed Colgate (another Ivy League team) and URI (probably a better team than Brown) by, with a reduced roster.

[twisted3829]

Colgate isn't ivy league

[SGreenwell]

Colgate isn't ivy league

I feel like they should be. Maybe if they focused more on their degrees and less on makin' my toothpaste, they'd make something of themselves.

[bigappleram]

and on cue brown and vegas beat PC. when the line smells fishy it always is!

[reef]

My PC ml parlays all got flushed down the toilet, I thought they would at least win

[ATPTourFan]

Rough few nights for Reef!! I hope you're not living in a cardboard box off the strip now!

[Ramulous]

Stick with poker, Reef......at least you can win with bad cards if you play them right.....

[reef]

I know it, sports gambling has always been my downfall, freaking TCU just screwed me in their bowl game blew a late 13-0 lead just sickening

[reef]

Well I am living off the strip but thankfully not in a cardboard box !!!!