College Basketball Coaching ATS Splits

How to read this

Cover% excludes pushes. Games includes them. Avg Margin is the mean number of points by which a coach beat or missed the closing spread, averaged over every game in the split — it measures magnitude, which cover% cannot. League average is +0.16.

Z is (W−L)/√(W+L), how far a record sits from a coin flip in standard deviations. Breakeven at standard −110 juice is 52.4%.

Method

• All lines are BetIQ (TeamRankings) closing spreads. Scores were independently verified against ESPN.
• Rest is BetIQ’s schedule-aware field, which counts games with no betting line — non-D1 opponents included.
• Travel distance is great-circle miles from the travelling campus to the venue, not driving miles. Campus coordinates come from IPEDS; all 2,181 neutral-site games were resolved to a venue city from KenPom schedules.
• Minimum-games thresholds are stated per split and per pool, and are counted in games, not decisions.
• Power pool is the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC, Big East and the rebuilt Pac-12 — 83 coaches. Mid-Major is the other 248.

The caveat that matters

Season-to-season persistence of coach cover% is r = −0.04. Only four of 247 qualifying coaches sit at |z| ≥ 2 when chance alone predicts about 12. Treat any single leaderboard as description of what happened, not a forecast of what happens next.

Data through the 2025-26 season. Built from a workbook that reproduces every figure here from the raw game log.