College Basketball in February is generally the stretch drive for teams to jockey for position to get their ticket punched to the Big Dance in March. But what I have found in February is that the Las Vegas Bookmakers are at their best in February. By that I mean that the Las Vegas lines are the tighest that they will be all year. Case in point this past Saturday there was 91 College Basketball Games played and of those 91 Games 20 of them fell within a bucket of the Las Vegas Line. That's over 20% of the games played were decided by a bucket or less of the spread. 

From a Handicapping point of view when a Game was decided by a bucket or less of the line it didn't matter which side you had you were lucky to win or unlucky to lose. The game was decided by who hit their last free throws or who made that 3 pointer in the final minute. So don't feel good or bad with your selection. Vegas is very good at what they do sometimes too good and we can turn the table on them with their own expertise. 

By this I'm talking about middling (a concept where you are risking 10% to Win 100% or 200%.) With the lines this tight it pays to shop for lines especially on Saturday's when the lines will move quickly. If you have more than one outlet and one source has for example Texas (-7) as they were on Saturday. The hot side on Saturday was Iowa St and thus the line began to drop. Had you jumped on Iowa St. at (+7) you could have bought the play back late with Texas at (-5' or 6). What this means is that had we bet $1000 on Iowa St at (+7) and a $1000 on Texas at (-5') we just hit the lottery. For a $100 gamble we won $2000. Even had we only got Texas at (-6) we would of won $1000. Understand that you will lose most of your middle bets but you can lose 20 middles and hit just one and break even.

So middlers rejoice this your time of the year beat Vegas at their own Game while the lines are this tight.