The Slow Teams Don't Cover

The Slow Teams Don't Cover

Once again we deal with things that are logical but are they always true?.  I have heard many a person talk about how teams that play fast cover as they have more possessions to extend their lead where as favorites that play slow can't cover since they don't have time.  Now we all know this is illogical since Vegas knows their pace and sets the lines with that in mind.    But is there correlation for other reasons?

As we did with Totals, lets look at the relationship between favs and dogs that play fast v slow compared to their opponents and their ability to cover & lets look at what possessions really mean to the cover/no cover bet and finally look at how the game types look.  

This approach is very similar to what I did in the blog post "The Slow Teams go Under".   To understand some of what I'm saying here, you should read that post.  

As always, this is 2 years of data set on purpose and we only look at Round 0, Round 1 and Round 2.  Round 0 were known as play in games, Round 1 is 64 to 32, Round 2 is 32 to 16.

Lets start with Fav Cover Rates based on their Regular Season Tempo compared to their opponents.  Cover Par in this dataset is 52.43%.  

If the Fav played Faster than Opponents in the Regular Season:  59.09% Cover Rate which is 6.66pp better or 12.71% advantage.   This is the bet. 

PUSH and Favs who play Slower than Opponents in Regular Season are both below Par by less than 3 pp and therefore not bet-able arbitrage.  

If we look at Dogs, remember I will talk about cover % so in this case you want to see LOW numbers if you think betting the dogs... 

If the dog played Faster than Opponents in the Regular Season:  33.33% Cover Rate which is 19pp worse than par or a 36.42% advantage.  This is the bet -- No Cover.

Wait?  How do those last statements work together... right that is the issue; you can't look at only 1 team in the equation.  Lets go to the next level, which requires us to move from APL analysis and move to Possessions Data. 

If the Fav plays faster; The Cover is at 50% (Below Par). 

If the Dog plays Faster; The Cover is at 67.4% (SUPER BETABLE)

If the 2 Teams are equal; The Cover is at 22.2% (SUPER BETABLE -- No Cover)

So lets use our 9 game type analysis again: 

Game Type is "Fav Bias - Dog Bias"

So what does this tell us? 

• In general, bet the "Faster" Team (Fav to Cover, Dog to No Cover)
• If both teams are neutral to bias (Push concept); Bet the Fav to Cover
• If both teams are slow, bet the No Cover

Other Fun Notes

• As favs go, Virginia (both years) are the slowest team since the shot clock, throw in the 2017 St. Mary's team that was also very slow and you have a 2-2 Cover Record in the past 2 years.
• The fastest teams are 2016 Xavier, 2017 Kentucky & UCLA; and looking at those favorites they are 2-3-1 on Covers. 
• Looking at slow dogs; if we take the 10 slowest dog games -- 2016 Ark-LR, 2016 NI, 2016 Bucky, 2017 Princeton, 2017 Bucky, 2017 St. Mary's, 2017 UVA, 2017 Michigan;  Covers are only 3 for 10 (30%)
• Looking at fast dogs; if we take the 10 fastest dog games -- 2016 FDU, 2016 Iona, 2016, Hampton, 2016 Buffalo, 2016 USC, 2016 UWGB, 2017 Wake, 2017 Winthrop, 2017 ND, 2017 Creighton; Covers are 8-10 (80%)

TJH