In the WNBA, 75% of teams qualify for the postseason each year, meaning that the non-playoff teams truly represent the bottom of the barrel. Unsurprisingly, teams that fail to make the playoffs the previous season often experience an extended losing streak as the next season begins. It's true that bad teams often stay bad, but in the betting world, bad teams can also be profitable against the spread, and that’s what I'm more interested in today.
The Worst of The Worst
One such bad team is the Indiana Fever, whose 9-25 record in 2017 was better than only the San Antonio Stars, a team that relocated and rebranded itself following the season. As for Indiana, the team began the 2017 season 7-7, but closed with a disastrous 2-18 record over the season’s final three months. Fast forward to 2018 and the Fever find themselves 1-13 to begin the campaign. Folks, this team is 3-31 since July of 2017. And yet, this article supports betting on Indiana. Assuming you didn’t just close this tab in your browser, bear with me here.
The following BetLabs WNBA Spread system matches the following criteria:
- The team did not make the playoffs last season.
- The game is played during the first half of the season.
- The team is on a losing streak of three or more games.
A $100 bettor following this system would have finished 114-86-3 and profited $2,232 for an 11% ROI. The system has been profitable in each of the past four seasons and has started out 8-5 in 2018. Considering the Fever’s recent history, it should not surprise you to learn that Indiana has already matched this system six times in 2018. In those games, the Fever are 4-2 against the spread, netting bettors a 28.8% ROI.
Game Environment
Don’t get me wrong, the Fever are likely to lose for the 32nd time in their last 35 games. But in addition to matching the aforementioned system, there are reasons to take Indiana at +12 today. Their opponent, the Connecticut Sun, have been really struggling of late without key starter Alyssa Thomas, who has missed the past five games with a shoulder injury. The Sun are 1-4 in Thomas’ absence, and their only win over that stretch came against — guess who — Indiana on the 24th.
Moreover, this is a schedule alert game for Connecticut, which will be playing its third game over the last four days after losing to Washington Tuesday night. The Fever meanwhile have been off since that June 24 matchup against Connecticut. That has given the Fever plenty of time to rest and come up with a plan to — I was going to say win, but that’s probably too strong — avoid getting blown out.
