Multiple players were recently charged in a college basketball point-shaving scheme that spanned nearly 20 Division I teams, with federal prosecutors alleging that dozens of games were manipulated over multiple seasons. The indictment underscores a familiar integrity concern in college basketball, but it also points to a less examined problem: how modern game-fixing often avoids detection not by throwing games outright, but by operating within normal statistical variance. In college basketball, manipulation can be confined to late-game possessions, marginal decisions, and outcomes that look ordinary on the scoreboard, even as they prove decisive........

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