Jeff Haney gets good advice but not to follow all the time on college basketball betting

By Jeff Haney

Monday, Jan. 14, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Alan Boston does use a computer, but not to crunch numbers. Instead, he scours the sports sections of newspapers linked to the Web site of the American Journalism Review, hoping to unearth a nugget of information he can put to work betting on college basketball.

Boston eschews databases in favor of trying to get in tune with the “rhythms” of a couple of hundred college basketball teams on the betting board.

“I know that sounds weird to some people,” Boston says.

This college basketball season, Boston has been appearing on a weekly conference call for sports bettors, dissecting the results of the college basketball slate, analyzing upcoming games on the fly and sharing his handicapping philosophy.

Boston typically speaks from his Las Vegas home, taking questions from conference organizer Jon Spevack of Oakland, Calif., and any bettors who call in to participate.

The following is a small sampling, in thumbnail form, of Boston’s thoughts on how to make money betting on college basketball ...

1. Often bet against favorites playing a nonconference game in the midst of their conference schedule.

Take the Jan. 5 game between Florida State and La Salle. Florida State, a 17-point favorite, was coming off a tough 66-64 victory against Atlantic Coast Conference rival Georgia Tech and was facing the rest of its ACC schedule next, Boston pointed out.

The situation set up well for La Salle, because the Seminoles figured to come out flat against a team they expected to beat. They were a big favorite “and they knew it,” Boston said.

La Salle lost 81-76, easily staying within the number. The lesson wasn’t that Boston won his bet, he said, but that similar scheduling spots show up frequently.

“I always say, look for parallel situations,” Boston said.

2. Look for big underdogs early in conference play.

In early season nonconference games, heavy favorites tend to pull away and win by even more points than expected, Boston said.

In conference competition, however, coaches usually have at least a grudging respect for each other when they meet a couple of times a year.

“They don’t run up the score on their brethren,” Boston said, making “backdoor” covers a strong possibility. A case in point came when Iowa covered an 18-point spread against Wisconsin, losing 64-51 in an early Big Ten clash.

Boston, a supporter of Iowa coach Todd Lickliter, expects the Hawkeyes to pull an upset or two this season, although they won’t qualify for any tournament.

3. Look for letdowns off huge efforts.

This maxim prompted Boston to bet against Loyola-Chicago of the Horizon League on Jan. 5, two days after the Ramblers “played their hearts out” at Cleveland State.

When a weak team puts its guts and soul into a game and comes up short or even ekes out a grueling victory it’s often due for a “clinker” next time out, Boston said, especially if it doesn’t have much time to recover.

Loyola-Chicago was never in the Jan. 5 game against Youngstown State, losing by 10 as a 3-point underdog.

“It played out that way,” Boston said on the conference call. “Whether it was for the reasons I stated, who knows? That’s what we’re here for, to try to figure that out ... Each game is a puzzle. Hopefully I can throw a few thoughts out there that get people thinking.”

4. The beginning of conference play equals a clean slate.

This concept yielded three consecutive winning tickets on Georgia State of the Colonial Athletic Association, which looked unexceptional in early nonconference play but covered three in a row as a double-digit underdog on the league schedule.

It didn’t work out so well for Boston when he backed Dartmouth as a 9-point underdog against Harvard, which won 82-56.

Still, “underachieving preconference teams playing in conference ... this type of game has made me money over the years,” Boston said.

5. Sometimes replacement players are better than expected.

Pittsburgh of the Big East lost two starters to injuries, including point guard Levance Fields, but Boston suspected the drop-off in talent to their fill-ins wouldn’t be too severe especially considering Pitt plays a fundamentally sound, half-court style.

“I did not crush their (power) rating like other (handicappers) did,” Boston said.

That led him to make a bet on the Panthers as a 4 1/2-point underdog Jan. 6 against Villanova, a game Pitt lost by only 1 point.

6. Don’t follow Alan Boston or anyone else blindly. “There’s no such thing as systems,” Boston said. “You can evaluate it game by game. If you think it works, be aware it works, but don’t go with it 100 percent of the time ...

“People say it’s a 60 percent thing, it’s an 80 percent thing. No, there’s nothing like that, man. All those trends, it’s (malarkey). Find the reason it works, apply it to other situations, (and) you have something.”