CBB Sharp Report: Smart Money Moving Baylor-West Virginia Betting Line

Today's college basketball slate is nothing special. There are about 30 total games on the board, but most of them involve smaller school. After yesterday's conference championship games, we don't deserve any entertaining games. Can't get too greedy.

One of the most heavily bet games is the Big-12 showdown between Baylor and West Virginia. Showdown may not be the right word, as Baylor is 3-2 in conference play while WVU is a conference-worst 1-5, but the spread is a close one.

The Mountaineers are coming off their upset over Kansas, so their season may be turning around.

Here's a look at how wiseguys are playing tonight's Baylor-West Virginia matchup.

Baylor @ West Virginia

9 p.m. ET | ESPN/ESPNU

Sharp angle: West Virginia (moved from -2 to -3)

Though WVU has the worse record, it opened as a 2-point home favorite. To my surprise, that win over Kansas did not stay fresh in the minds of bettors, as just 40% of bets are backing the Mountaineers.

The money is a wildly different story, though. Those 40% of tickets account for 83% of money in the early going, which has caused the line to move.

After opening at -2, the Mountaineers can now be found at -3 across the market. A contrarian home favorite in conference play … how have they fared historically?

Let me start by saying that home favorites in conference games have not performed well as a whole, covering the spread 48.9% of the time in over 20,000 games in our Bet Labs database.

When you slap the fewer than 50% of bets filter on them, they do improve a bit to 49.9%, but that's obviously still not profitable. They do, however, become profitable with fewer than 30% of bets, covering nearly 54% of the time, but I highly doubt the Mountaineers will drop that low.