With Saturday’s comeback win over Duke in Chapel Hill, North Carolina has won five straight and on Monday climbed to No. 11 in the latest AP Poll. However, the analytics community doesn’t feel as strongly as the AP voters about the strength of the Tar Heels.
As of Tuesday morning, UNC is 25th in KenPom, and ESPN Analytics gives the Tar Heels just a 47 percent chance of beating unranked Miami in Coral Gables on Tuesday night. The betting odds seem to project a similar reality about Hubert Davis’s team.
Despite its No. 11 ranking, North Carolina is just a 1.5-point favorite on the road against Miami, according to the FanDuel Sportsbook.
North Carolina opens as a narrow road favorite over unranked Miami
The betting odds of -118 on the moneyline for UNC give the Tar Heels an implied 54 percent probability of winning the game. While that number is certainly more favorable than ESPN Analytics’s 47 percent chance, there are other factors that go into betting odds that aren’t factored into ESPN’s model. Even ESPN BET has UNC as a -120 favorite on the moneyline, which is an implied 54.5 percent probability.
Betting lines don’t always reflect that analytical reality of a game because the ultimate goal of a sportsbook is to get an equal amount of bets on each side of a given line, because regardless of which team wins, they’ll collect a profit through the vig.
So, in this case, UNC’s No. 11 ranking and standing as one of the blue bloods in the sport, with a highly-touted freshman in Caleb Wilson coming off a huge game in a rivalry win, is going to drive the public to back the Tar Heels more heavily, even if the numbers disagree.
If UNC were an underdog in this game, the books would likely take significantly more money on that side of the bet, putting them in a precarious position where, if UNC did win, the books would lose money.
At 18-5, Miami is 41st in KenPom with a net rating of +18.51, which is fairly comparable to UNC’s +22.42 net rating. Factor in home court advantage for the upstart Hurricanes in Year 1 under former Duke assistant Jai Lucas, and it’s not terribly hard to see why the analytics are leaning Miami on Tuesday night.
Still, coming off a win over Duke, which is No. 4 in the AP Poll and No. 3 in KenPom, it would be a surprising result for UNC to drop an ACC game to Miami, and a serious blow to the momentum that Davis’s team has built after early struggles in conference play.