Tournament Longshots

[Senor Capper]

Each year there are a few teams in the NCAA Tourney that jump out at us as possible good investments for a potential higher return on your money. We?re not talking about the so-called favorites like Kentucky, which is 2/1 or Arizona, which came in at 3/1, but teams with ?longer? odds that we feel can make a run and have a decent shot to reach the Final Four. After looking closely at this year?s brackets and potential matchups as the tourney progresses, there are two teams that we feel have a decent shot at reaching the Final Four.


ASA likes the 'Cuse at 15/1 odds.

SYRACUSE (15/1): We really like this team at these odds. They are big, athletic and play the type of zone defense that many teams don?t see much of during the year. An opposing team is going to have to be hitting their outside shots in order to beat the Orange. That?s always a difficult task in an unfamiliar arena. Their starting lineup poses matchup problems for nearly everyone as they are 6-2, 6-6, 6-8, 6-9 & 7-0. They have a star in Carmelo Anthony, who averages nearly 23 PPG and 10 RPG. He is the best freshman in the country and is a shoo-in to be one of the top five picks in next year?s NBA Draft if he decides to come out. Four players average in double figures which makes it tough for opposing teams to ?key? on one or two players. Head coach Jim Boeheim goes eight deep which will also help during the tourney. They also come into the tourney on a roll winning 11 of their last 13 games and finishing 24-5 on the year. Their only losses came to Memphis, Pitt, Rutgers and UConn (twice). Syracuse led the Big East in scoring at 80 PPG and was second in scoring margin, winning by an average of 10 PPG. Not only that, but they can do it on both ends of the floor as they shot a very solid 47% from the field while giving up just 39%. The NCAA Selection Committee also did the 'Cuse a huge favor by placing them in the East. It will play its first two games in Boston and if it can get to the Sweet 16, it will be in its own ?backyard?, Albany, NY. They are also in the bracket with the weakest #1 seed, Oklahoma. Their road to the Final Four looks like Manhattan followed by Oklahoma State or Penn, either of which they should beat. The Sweet 16 will most likely match them up with Wake Forest and then Oklahoma, both beatable teams. The only ?downside? to this team is they are young. They rely on three freshman and three sophomores in their top eight.

That being said, we still like this team?s odds (15/1) and expect them to make a serious run.


Jack pay attention & bet a little on this prop ...


MARYLAND (18/1): You have to like the defending National Champs with odds like this. There is no way in our minds that the Terps should be a six seed. That is simply too low for this team. This team has been to two consecutive Final Fours and they are one of the more experienced teams in this tourney. They finished tied with Duke for second in the ACC and four seniors on this year?s team played significant roles in last year?s National Championship run. Seniors Tahj Holden (6-10) and Ryan Randle (6-9) give them a great presence inside while Steve Blake and Drew Nicholas can cause big problems on the perimeter. The Terps are also very deep with nine players averaging more than 4 PPG. Maryland is another team that gets it done on both ends of the floor as they put up 81 PPG while giving up just 67. That 14 point scoring margin was the largest of any team in the ACC this year. They also led the conference in both field goal percentage (46%) and defensive field goal percentage (38%). We also like their draw. They open with UNC Wilmington, which won?t be easy but they should get it done, followed by most likely Xavier. While the Muskateers are very good, their competition in the Atlantic 10 simply isn?t as strong as the ACC which could give Maryland the edge. After that it could be Florida if all goes according to seed. While the Gator are also very good, we?ll take a senior dominated Maryland team over a very young Florida squad. Texas is the #1 seed in the South and we feel the Terps can definitely give them a run. When all is said and done, we think the fact that these players have been in this situation for a few years now, gives them an edge over any opponent. Not to mention they are very talented.

Maryland is a steal.

 

[Senor Capper]

Close shaves

Close shaves

Last year only four games in the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament were settled by a single basket. That was an aberation, but also an extension of a recent trend. It was the lowest amount of "close games" ever played in any NCAA tournament since moving to a 64 team field in 1985.



With all the talk about parity in the NCAA and all the classic buzzer-beating highlight clips, close games in this tournament are on a decided decline.

Here's a look at the past 18 NCAA Tournaments and the number of games decided by three points or less. Interestingly enough, tourney's with a low amount of first and second round close games, tend to make it up in the later rounds.

Also, in tournaments with a low overall amount of close games, it is actually the underdogs who fared the best overall (1999 example) while fav's did well in years with a high amount of close games (1998).

Consecutive years with single digit "close shaves" has happened only once, being 1999-2000.

In 1999, underdogs were 13-2 ATS from the Sweet 16 onward, including UCONN's shocking upset over Duke in the final.

In 2001, not one game past the 2nd round ended within a basket. Favorites were 11-4 ATS from the Sweet 16 onward.

Games decided by three points or less by year.

Year R1-2 R3& on Total

1985 14 4 18
1986 11 4 15
1987 13 4 17
1988 10 2 12
1989 8 5 13
1990 16 6 22
1991 8 3 11
1992 5 6 11
1993 8 3 11
1994 6 2 8
1995 13 1 14
1996 6 4 10
1997 8 6 14
1998 13 5 18
1999 5 3 8
2000 8 1 9
2001 11 0 11
2002 4 2 6

 

[Senor Capper]

Road kill

Road kill

There is a theory that schools performing well on the road are well suited to tournament environments where the crowds will be either hostile or indifferent, and the officiating is void of any "home town" calls.

Naturally, the NCAA does its level best to keep all tourney games at geographically neutral sites. However, this is not an exact science and some teams do end up playing in front of particularly friendly or particularly hostile audiences. That can certainly make the road composure card a big factor in the outcome of a game.

Before DBC Sports was acquired by Vegas Insider, I used to browse a column there entitled Sports Book Insider, at the time written by Roxy Roxborough and David Scott. In one article on the NCAA Tournament written during the 2000 campaign, the column sites that a key element will be how well teams play on the road.

Every theory is worth bringing to the table, but solid handicapping requires that every theory be scrutinized and put to the test. Never accept a theory at face value, even when coming from an authority. This theory is no exception, so our researchers went to work and what we found appears below.

The teams with the best ATS road records in the 1999 NCAA tournament included Miami-Florida (8-1), Rhode Island (10-4), St. John's (8-2), Texas (8-3), Wisconsin (9-4), Duke (7-3), Kent (8-4), Utah (7-3), Auburn (7-4) and George Washington (6-4).

However, of the top-10 ATS road teams in last years tourney, a player would have lost money betting on eight. Only two teams, St. John's with a 3-1 ATS tourney record and Kent State at 1-0 ATS, were profit makers. The remaining eight combined for an ATS mark of 5-12.

It was the same story overall in 1998, where the top-10 road ATS teams in the tourney included St. John's, Illinois, Purdue, Syracuse, Tennessee, Cincinnati, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Stanford and Mississippi.

Of these top-10 schools, only three were profitable tourney teams. Kentucky (the eventual winner) covered the number on four of six occasions, Stanford posted a 3-2 mark and Purdue went 2-1. The other seven teams were all losing bets in the tourney, posting a combined mark of 2-8-1 ATS.

Maybe the public is more in tune with the numbers and perhaps such regular season success stories tend to inflate the numbers and actually create "value" on the other side.

Here's a more substantive observation, having to do with the same angle but dealing with the straight up numbers rather than the ATS figures. The two NCAA teams with the most SU road wins in 1999 included Connecticut (13-0) and Duke (10-0). Is it a coincidence that, out of 319 Division 1-A teams, these two teams ended up in the Finals?

There wasn?t a school close to them in SU road wins, with Auburn being the next best at 9-2.

Any guess as to which schools had the best SU road record in 1998? You were right if you guessed Kentucky (12-0) and Utah (11-3).

So, it seems that there is a correlation between road success and tourney success, but the ATS numbers and the SU numbers tell a very different story.

In 2000, we departed from this trend. In fact, in the 2000 event, not one of the Final Four teams (Michigan State, Florida, North Carolina or Wisconsin) had even a sniff when it came to road success either SU or ATS.

Below are the top teams in that regard from the 2000 tournament, none of which made the Final Four.

1999-2000 TOP ROAD ATS

Tulsa 12-2
Stanford 9-2
Long Beach 9-2
Miami 8-2
Utah State 7-2
Oklahoma 10-3
Seton Hall 8-3
Indiana 8-3
SMU 8-3
SWM St. 11-4


1999-2000 TOP ROAD SU

Note: Including only top-32 tourney teams

Cincinnati 14-1
Stanford 11-0
Duke 11-2
Oklahoma 11-3
Temple 10-5


True to form, with ATS teams at least, you could dismiss teams with regular season ATS success during the 2000 campaign. But a strange twist on the SU record occurred with Michigan State and Florida making the final.

We returned to form in 2001. Stanford was the top SU road team in the country but was dismissed on the ATS rule. That left Duke and Arizona with double-digit SU wins. Duke beat Arizona in the final that year.

2000-2001 TOP ROAD ATS

Stanford 11-4
Temple 11-6
St. Joseph's 9-4
W. Kentucky 9-4
Georgetown 9-5
N Carolina 8-5
Utah State 8-4


2000-2001 TOP ROAD SU

Note: including only top 32 tourney teams

Stanford 16-0
Duke 13-2
Arizona 10-6


Maryland reached and won the title in 2002, but certainly nobody saw Indiana - a complete aberration - coming out of nowhere to play runner up.

2001-2002 TOP ROAD SU

Note including only top 32 tourney teams

Kansas 11-1
Maryland 10-3
Cincinnati 10-3
Gonzaga 10-3

 

[Senor Capper]

The reality with any spread sport (NFL, NBA, CFB and CBK) is this: the team who wins the game also covers the spread 76 percent of the time. Considering that there are a total of 63 games from start to finish in the Big Dance, the thinking is if you pick all the winners you could expect to finish with a 49-14 ATS record. That is not a bad years work.



Following that train of thought, the obvious key to picking all 63 winners is being able to identify the underdogs who win outright. These "upsets" have a 100 percent ATS rate, which would account for a heavy portion of your 49-14 record. Many of you may recall when we first made our proprietary T-Ratings public back in 1998.

The key to our remarkable Madness run in 1998 was our ability to identify West Virginia in key upsets over seventh-ranked Temple and second-ranked Cincinnati. Washington defeated sixth-ranked Xavier, Detroit downed seventh-ranked St.John?s and Rhode Island beat top-ranked Kansas. Had we failed to identify those upsets, we may have struggled through the tourney trying to stay above water.

Given the importance of Big Dance "upsets," let's reverse engineer the process and see if we can't narrow down the window of opportunity where these golden eggs may be found. Remember, if we can identify the 63 winners then we can expect an overall record of approximately 49-14.

So let's keep it simple at this stage and make it our sole pursuit to identify the 63 winners. We'll start with the raw data, the numeric truths which may assist us in this pursuit.

To start with, we can examine the seed history of the tournament (dating back to '85 when the tourney expanded to 64 teams). That tells us that 16th seeds are 0-68, while 15th seeds are 4-64 making a combined 4-132 record dating back to 1979.

That tells us that we are reasonably safe in assuming that all first and second seeds will survive the first round. That takes the burden of 63 games down to 55.

Fourteenth seeds are 15-53 and 13th seeds are 17-51, giving them a combined record of 32-104. They pull an upset once in every four attempts. So it would be reasonable to expect that if we stayed with all eight of the third and fourth seeds, we would end up with six of eight straight up winners in round 1.

There are four 13-14 seeds this year getting just single digits to open the tournament. Tulsa, Manhattan, Western Kentucky and San Diego are all capped within two to three baskets of their third and fourth seed opponents.

Now, of the 32 13th and 14th seeds to win a first-round match, only five have gone on to win in the second round. So if we assume that two teams get by the first round, then we could also reasonably expect to win both of our second round games by betting against them in round two.

That eliminates the burden of 10 games, reducing us to 45 more games to deal with and accepting two losses. Note, all five 13 and 14 seeds to advance were conference champions. An at-large bid has never pulled an upset from the 13/14-hole and gone on to win in the second round.

That brings us to the fifth through 12th seeds also known as the land of upsets. Thanks to technical analysis, we know a thing or two about the nature of these upsets. There are two ways to get to the Big Dance, you can earn it by winning your conference or you can get there as an "at large" bid.

For starters, an accurate set of Power Ratings is a must-have tool. When the teams are seeded, they are done so by the NCAA RPI that addresses wins and losses but is not as accurate as those used in the gaming industry. After the NCAA seeds the tourney, do your own seeding and identify teams who are improperly seeded and thus offer a great amount of value in the numbers. This type of mis-seeding will account for two more first round upsets, leaving 43 games to work with.

Now, six out of every seven occasions an upset coming from properly seeded matchups. That happens when an automatic bid rises to the occasion and upsets an at-large bid. The notion that "it doesn't matter how you got here" is nonsense. Character teams who were good enough to win their conference tournaments are ALWAYS more dangerous than those invited through the good ol' boys network. In every sense of the word, astute handicappers know that the conference tournaments are an "audition" for the main event.

Moreover, there is a very high percentage of "upsets" when two "at large" bids face each other. The underdog will pull the upset nearly 50 percent of the time when two top-ranked (top 32) "at large" teams face each other. So when searching for upsets, look for them when two at-large bids meet. When teams who are seeded ninth through 12th are the teams who earned bids versus favored teams who are "at large" bids.

More seeding notes:

A one-seed has won 11 titles and finished second seven times since 1985, but all four number-one seeds have never made the Final Four.

If you totaled the seeds from the Final Four last year, you would get nine (two one seeds, a number two and a number five). That is the norm, it has been above 12 just five times.

There have been 20 teams with records of .500 or worse. They have never won a game in the field of 64. (Note: A losing team did win in the play-in game in 2003 when UNC-Asheville defeated Texas-Southern).

Only two teams (North Carolina and Wisconsin in 2000) have made the Final Four with 13 losses or more.

No seed lower than eight (Villanova in 1985) has won a national title since they started seeding teams in 1979.

No five or seven seeds has ever won a national title.

There have only been two teams seeded lower than eighth to make a Final Four.