pointshaving – Rush The Court

Morning Five: 06.05.13 Edition

rtmsf — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 12:01:15 +0000

In what turned out to be a rough Tuesday in terms of college basketball-related news, a federal grand jury in Alabama unsealed an indictment that alleges former Auburn guard Varez Ward of attempting to throw a game against Arkansas in the 2011-12 season. Ward, a junior at the time, is accused of two counts of sports bribery (or more commonly known as point-shaving) where he allegedly conspired with gamblers and tried to solicit other players to throw the game. (full indictment here) Ward only played 19 seconds in that contest against the Hawgs, suffering a thigh bruise very early that kept him [...]

It’s a Love/Hate Relationship: Volume II

jbaumgartner — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 17:12:26 +0000

Jesse Baumgartner is an RTC contributor. In this piece he’ll spend each week reviewing the five things he loved and hated about the previous week of college basketball.

The Five Things I Loved This Week

I LOVED…..a good comeback story, in this case Notre Dame’s Carleton Scott. Here’s a guy who didn’t play much his first three years and had an issue of some sort last season that caused him to leave the team for a bit. Well he got his chance this year, and the bouncy 6’8 forward has showed big-time versatility while putting [...]

College Basketball’s Unmentionable: the Issue of Point Shaving?

rtmsf — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 12:11:14 +0000

It’s not often that we stumble across academic research papers these days, but last week we happened upon one from the Department of Economics at Temple University in Philadelphia entitled, “Point Shaving in NCAA Basketball: Corrupt Behavior or Statistical Artifact?” In the paper, Professors George Diemer and Mike Leeds use various statistical analyses to conclude that not only does point shaving regularly occur in college basketball, but it occurs in two specifically defined situations. Their conclusion builds upon prior work by Professor Justin Wolfers at Penn’s Wharton School, who found a few years ago that approximately 1% of lined NCAA basketball games fell into an outlier suggestive of gambling-related [...]

05.07.09 Fast Breaks

rtmsf — Thu, 07 May 2009 23:40:57 +0000

As we anxiously await John Wall’s FINAL DECISION…

Here’s your Greg Paulus update from his recent trip to Nebraska; and it appears as if the Dookie won’t be the only basketball player making the transition to the gridiron next fall, as Miami (FL)’s Jimmy Graham will join the Hurricane football team. Credit where it’s due. Tom Izzo will put his money where his mouth is. Remember the Toledo basketball and football point-shaving scandal involving our boy Sammy Villegas? The other shoe dropped on Wednesday. Why announce a tournament field when the field isn’t even set yet? Pat Forde gives his breakdown of the Renardo Sidney recruitment [...]

Breaking Down the Preseason Mags…

rtmsf — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 21:26:32 +0000

We’re heading into the middle of September already, literally thirty days until Midnight Madness, and the first batch of preseason mags are already proliferating on B&N shelves like West Virginians on crystal meth at a swap meet (no offense intended to the West Virginians not on crystal meth, of course). We know many of our readers are asking, “what’s a magazine?” To which we reply, “it’s what old people read while they’re on the toilet.” For our few readers here over 30 (present company excluded), we offer the first installment of our continuing series of reviews of the preseason [...]

Monday Thoughts

rtmsf — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 16:09:48 +0000

A few different thoughts today, but none enough for its own post:

Circling back to the Donaghy saga, TrueHoop uncovered an academic paper on the NBA by a Stanford undergrad named Jonathan Gibbs that echoes the findings of the Wharton study on college basketball by Prof. Justin Wolfers that we mentioned last week. In summary, Gibbs found that there are a number of statistical outlier NBA games each season where heavy favorites beat the spread less often than they should, which, when controlled for confounding factors, is suggestive of pointshaving. This certainly comports with our prior stance that it happens more often than we all think. It seems that the [...]

Tim Donaghy Scandal Fallout

rtmsf — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 02:44:30 +0000

Much is going to be made over the next week over the disclosure broken Friday by the New York Post that Tim Donaghy, a veteran NBA referee, allegedly became heavily indebted through illegal gambling and was using his position as an official to manipulate point spreads by proxy of organized crime. In other words… pointshaving, quite possibly the dirtiest word in sports. The only good news for the NBA was that the news hit on a summer Friday afternoon after a week of wall-to-wall Michael Vick and Barry Bonds-related outrage coverage.

“Kobe, do you think you could help [...]