U.S. Integrity, a gambling watchdog company, alerted casinos Thursday about unusual wagering surrounding a Temple-UAB men’s basketball game, according to Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde.
The betting line moved significantly throughout the day before tip-off as the spread at one casino spiked from the Blazers as a 1.5-point favorite Thursday morning to eight points by mid-afternoon. The line closed with UAB favored by seven points, right before tip-off. In the end, they beat Temple 100–72 to drop the Owls to 11–19 in coach Adam Fisher’s first year with the program.
The loss was Temple’s second straight, and neither defeat ever saw the team come close to covering the spread. In their previous game, the Owls were 5.5-point favorites against Tulsa and lost by five. One source told SI this is not the first time Temple has landed on the radar of U.S. Integrity, and that the organization has been monitoring Owls games for some time. (A spokesperson for the American Athletic Conference, which employs U.S. Integrity as a monitor, acknowledged the incident, as did a Temple spokesperson, who said Friday: “We will review the reports thoroughly in accordance with the university and NCAA policies.”)
The rise of legalized sports gambling has led to an increase in suspicious activity in the college space. Multiple Iowa and Iowa State athletes were accused last year of placing underage bets. (Four athletes who were involved in the case saw their charges dismissed.) And former Alabama baseball coach Brad Bohannon was fired last spring after providing insider information about his team to a bettor. U.S. Integrity was involved in identifying Bohannon’s role in that probe, too.
