If you’re a college basketball fan anywhere in North America, chances are you visited one or two NCAAB betting sites along the way. There’s a wide variety of sportsbooks out there offering lines on the entire college basketball season, from regular season games through to March Madness. We’ll show you how to navigate those lines and get the most betting value out of these college basketball games.

Reading NCAA basketball (NCAAB) odds is simpler than it might seem at first. To start, know there are three main types of bets: moneyline, point spread, and over/under (totals). Moneyline bets involve picking the winner of the game outright. The favorite team has a minus sign (-) before its odds, showing you how much you need to bet to win $100.

The underdog has a plus sign (+), indicating how much you win if you bet $100. Point spread bets focus on the winning margin. If a team is listed as -5, they need to win by more than 5 points. Over/under bets are about the total score of both teams combined. If the total is set at 150, you bet whether the score will be over or under that number. Understanding these betting odds can help you make informed bets on NCAAB games.

To see how the odds table works for each NCAAB game, let’s introduce some of the different types of bets you can make on your favorite college basketball teams:

College basketball moneylines ask you to pick the winner of a game, straight-up. The betting favorite will be shown using a negative number (e.g. Butler –150), and the underdog using a positive number (e.g. Providence +130).

Spread betting turns a game into more of a 50/50 situation by forcing the favorite to win by more than the posted number of points in order to cover. Butler was a –2.5 spread pick in our above example game, while Providence was +2.5.

Totals have become very popular among all sports bettors – they might even be the easiest type of sports betting there is. When betting on college basketball totals, you just pick whether the two teams will combine to score Over or Under the posted number of points.

A parlay bet allows you to combine several college basketball bets into one package. If all your picks win, your payouts get multiplied instead of added together, but if you miss even one pick, the entire parlay loses.

Prop bets (short for "proposition" bets) let you wager on things besides the game itself. Player props are the most popular of these; you can bet whether an individual player will score Over or Under their posted total for points, rebounds and other statistical categories.

Futures betsare on events that won’t be resolved until a future date, like who will win the next March Madness tournament. College basketball futures odds are usually available all year long – even during the offseason.

Betting on NCAA basketball, especially during March Madness, can be thrilling. Here are some tips to help you make smarter bets.