Update on Tennessee’s odds
In June, the Tennessee basketball team was 50-1 to win the NCAA Tournament, according to the Westgate SuperBook. Those odds have continued to drop.
Following the Vols’ loss to No. 2 Kansas on Friday in the NIT Tip-Off Championship, Tennessee dropped in every major poll. The SuperBook, however, will likely keep the Vols at 20-1 to win the title.
“Not yet, unless we take a big bet on it,” Derek Wilkinson, manager at the SuperBook, said. “I don’t see us moving that, not just off one game early in the season. They looked good against Kansas. I guess there’s a chance we could, but I doubt it.”
In fact, Vegas views the Kansas loss through in optimistic lens, if anything.
“If they keep playing games like they did against Kansas … that number could come down some more,” Wilkinson said.
During this part of the season, dating back to the preseason, professional bettors hone in on season long “futures” bets. They place wagers on teams that they think have a good chance to win the NCAA Tournament.
So far, Tennessee has been one of those teams.
“We’ve taken some good money on Tennessee,” Wilkinson said. “At the end of June we had them at 50-1 … we are down to 20-1 now. It’s definitely not our biggest liability, in terms of all the teams, but if they were to win, we would lose a significant amount of money. We’ve got some good money on Tennessee; people like them so far.”
The SuperBook cares more about who is making these bets, rather than the size of the bet.
“They weren’t huge bets. They weren’t like $100,000 or anything, but they were from some guys that we respect, so that’s why we currently have them at 20-1.”
Why professionals have not been betting college basketball
Early in the college basketball season, professional sports bettors focus on futures bets, along with watching games to gauge how good teams will be.
“My guess on that is they are waiting to see how the teams look for the first couple of weeks,” Wilkinson said. “As you get closer to the tournament, especially conference tournaments, the wise guys really start putting down some big bets on it.”
Wilkinson expects those guys to roll in to the SuperBook in the near future.
“Since the season just started, we haven’t seen a ton of sharp bets on college basketball yet,” Wilkinson said. “Usually every year we have some guys that are really good at it, but I just haven’t seen those guys come in. They want to see the talent that teams have and how they play together, so we haven’t seen those guys yet. But every year we’ve got probably 15 or 20 guys that we really respect their opinions.”
Once the professionals begin betting on regular season college basketball games, the lines will move based on who the pros are siding with.
“We take lower limits on basketball games just because it doesn’t see the level of action that football gets,” Wilkinson said. “A guy might come in and put $1,000 on a game, and we will move that point spread a whole point. In football we wouldn’t do that. We would need $5,000 to $10,000. With football once a week, we get a lot more action on a single game. (With) any college basketball team, they play so many times that we don’t see as much action on those games.”
