Amid coronavirus, college basketball betting a battle for information

Starting and completing the college basketball season will be a victory for bookmakers and bettors with coronavirus cases surging across the country.

But the season also shapes up as one of the biggest battles for information in the betting world, with about 350 Division I teams each potentially dealing with coronavirus issues that could derail them for a period of time.

Especially in less-publicized conferences, sharp bettors will be looking to get their money down before sportsbooks know why they’re taking action on Tennessee Tech or Sacred Heart.

The season starts Nov. 25, and handicapper Shawn Harnish said he’s ready for the fight.

“I jumped on it early. I saw this coming,” he said. “(Last) season got cut short. It’s my favorite sport. Information is key.”

Harnish said a lot of his preparation for the season has involved working the phone and social media, digging for information about various teams. Have they already had a coronavirus outbreak? What are their specific protocols if someone tests positive? And after that, what about, you know, the actual basketball?

“It’s not like I’m just looking at numbers all day,” Harnish (@GUPPYMONEY) said. “I can actually engage with trying to find an edge through conversation rather than through numbers, and that’s exciting. It gets really boring staring at numbers all the time.”

The numbers that bookmakers are worried about are dollars. With the starts of the NBA and NHL seasons delayed until late December or January, college basketball will provide crucial midweek betting options in between football weekends.

“I’d say right now the state of college basketball is the most important thing to our business,” Westgate sportsbook director John Murray said via text message. “We are all hopeful that they get in as much of a season as possible, and we are very closely monitoring it.”

In recent years, some sportsbooks have started posting lines on every Division I game after previously ignoring some smaller conferences. Harnish said he is worried that some books will pull back their offerings on the so-called “extra games” this season if they see they are getting beat to coronavirus or other information.

“The easy way out is just not to book action, and they’ll use COVID and hide behind COVID with that,” he said.

Murray said the Westgate had not finalized its plans, but “I’d imagine we will be looking for as many games to put up as possible,” especially if games are frequently being postponed or canceled, as seen this season in college football.

Circa sportsbook director Matt Metcalf said it had not finalized its plans either, in terms of the number of games posted or betting limits, though he said it would probably start more slowly than normal.

“I don’t want to start putting all the games up, then having to pull back,” Metcalf said. “We’ll probably try to get the main board under control before we start offering the extra board.”

“I’ve joked that we’ve got to hire a bunch of COVID basketball readers, have dedicated guys to keep up with that,” he added.

Murray said: “It’s definitely another thing to worry about and monitor. Gotta be up on that stuff, or you’ll lose.”

Metcalf said one saving grace for bookmakers was that college football showed that games involving coronavirus cases would often be canceled and bets refunded, so books weren’t punished as often by being beat to information on key players being out.

“I don’t feel as much pressure, because if it’s really bad, the games get canceled,” he said.

For all the work Harnish is doing monitoring coronavirus developments, he said bettors also had to be careful not to let that become their only handicapping criteria.

“I think so many people are going to be focused on COVID, it’s going to be people just betting COVID,” he said. “This team has a guy or two out, I’m betting against them, and that’s going to be the handicap. But when it comes down to it, you still need to know who’s good and who’s not.”

Contact Jim Barnes at jbarnes@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0277. Follow @JimBarnesLV on Twitter.