College Basketball Game Flagged For Unusual Betting Activity After Suspicious Line Movement

Temple University men’s basketball saw its season come to an end with a blowout loss to UAB in the American Athletic Conference Tournament on Thursday night. The Blazers smacked the Owls by 28.

It was such an ugly loss that it raised red flags in the sports betting space.

U.S. Integrity, a gambling watchdog company, sent an alert to casinos regarding unusual wagers. It has been monitoring Temple games “for a while” and the most recent line movement was especially suspicious.

Most sportsbooks had Alabama-Birmingham has a two-point favorite when lines were listed on Wednesday. The spread stayed pretty consistent through Thursday morning and hovered around -2.5 at 1:30 p.m. It inflated to as high as -8 less than an hour later.

Such significant line movement in college basketball is extremely unusual, period. It is especially bizarre during conference tournaments without any major injuries or significant news surrounding availability. A spread typically does not move 5+ points in such a short amount of time without a major star being ruled out. No one was ruled out for either side.

And then Temple did not come anywhere close to covering.

Big dub in the City of Brotherly Love.#WinAsOne pic.twitter.com/1L7t4LJYWS

— UAB Men's Basketball (@UAB_MBB) March 8, 2024

Tom Fenstermaker, director of communications for the AAC, told Pat Forde that the conference is “aware” of the U.S. Integrity flag. He confirmed that the conference is a client of the watchdog organization but did not comment further.

Now, to be fair, the -2.5 line in favor of the Blazers was way too low. The Owls were terrible throughout the regular season and a lot of false value hinged on the neutral site element to a conference tournament. It was never going to be a one possession game and it is very possible that the massive jump to -8 stemmed from sharps jumping all over the value with big wagers.

However, the movement is still peculiar.

This has happened with Temple more than once this season. U.S. Integrity had its proverbial eyebrow raised on multiple occasions throughout the year, and experts within the gambling space noticed how weird it was prior to tipoff on Thursday.