Report: Two UConn assistants resign

NCAA Basketball Betting Lines

05/27/2010 - Storrs, CT (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The University of Connecticut has called a news conference for 10 a.m. (et) Friday at Gampel Pavilion, when the school is expected to disclose its review of possible recruiting violations in the men's basketball program.

The Hartford Courant reported Thursday night that assistant coach Patrick Sellers and director of basketball operations Beau Archibald have resigned from the staff due to the allegations that were first reported by Yahoo! Sports in March 2009.

UConn reportedly violated NCAA rules in the recruitment of Nate Miles, who was expelled from school in October of 2008 without even practicing with the Huskies. Yahoo! Sports conducted a six-month investigation and said Miles was provided with lodging, meals and transportation by Josh Nochimson -- a professional agent and a former UConn student manager.

Since Nochimson had a relationship with UConn basketball, the NCAA defines him as a person with "athletic interests" for the school. Therefore, he would be unable to be involved in the recruiting process.

The report also stated that the UConn basketball staff, including five different coaches, had at least 1,565 phone and text communications with Nochimson during Miles' recruitment between 2006 and 2008. Connecticut head coach Jim Calhoun was said to have been involved in 16 of those calls.

The Yahoo! report indicated that former UConn assistant coach Tom Moore made 27 calls to people close to Miles in December 2006. The NCAA permits just one call per month to prospective recruits in a player's junior year of high school.

Moore, according to the Yahoo! report, knew Miles had a relationship with Nochimson, another potential NCAA violation. Moore has since left UConn and is the head coach at Quinnipiac University.

The report states that Nochimson advised Miles, who eventually enrolled at UConn in June 2008 after attending five high schools in four different states.

In late September 2008, Miles was arrested by UConn campus police and issued a restraining order after a female student said she was physically and sexually assaulted by him. Miles then made contact with the woman, leading to felony charges of violating a restraining order.

The school expelled Miles in early October before basketball practice began. Miles eventually enrolled at the College of Southern Idaho.

Calhoun received a five-year contract extension through the 2014 season earlier this month. The Courant reports Calhoun, athletic director Jeff Hathaway and Rick Evrard, the school's outside counsel for NCAA-related matters, will be at the press conference.

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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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