They call it March Madness for a reason, but can you remember a year when so many of the lower seeds have been winning and doing it in fine fashion? I picked a good year not to fill out my brackets cuz these are the types of games I live for, and I might’ve won the big jackpot. If you really look at it, it makes a lot of sense; this year the big power schools haven’t been so dominant and that gives the lower seeds cause for hope. Normally the lesser teams in the power conferences are seeded between 3-7 and the winner of the smaller conferences are the teams that you see seeded 11-15 and those are the teams that have been kicking ass this year.
Bettors don’t seems to get it that both teams have intentions of winning the game, that is why they are always taking the favorites without realizing that the points are involved as well. If you simply bet against what the public was betting you’d be way up right now. These lower seeds are winning outright, let alone if you took the points or even better got paid more on the money line.
Let’s break this down a bit, and you can apply this philosophy to almost ever upset in the first 2 days. Some of these guys realize that they will have to get a job after the tourney is over and they are out of college. They don’t take it for granted, and rise to the occasion. The higher seeds may have some McDonald’s All Americans that may be “one and done” and leave after one year.
So if you translate that into laymen’s terms, what you have is some teams that have played together for 4 years and learned to win together, and play team basketball vs. a bunch of clueless freshman and sophomores that may care more about drinking, getting campus pussy and their upcoming NBA contract. They come into his game unprepared for battle against the lesser teams that are hungrier and sometimes better coached and more prepared for the job at hand.
Let’s also look at the fact that the NCAA seeds the way it does, as we touched upon before. The 12 seed in most cases is a conference champion, maybe has only lost 5-6 games all year and then maybe won it’s conference tourney. They come in on roll and like the feeling of winning and want to go further.
On the other side you have teams from power conferences that have basically had down years, maybe have lost 9-11 games and finished in the middle of the pack in their conferences. They never really learned how to win, maybe not how to play together and then you throw in the fact that maybe they don’t really care about winning. They probably didn’t study film too hard on their first round opponent, maybe even concentrating on the second round. You put all these factors together and the underdog comes out fast and takes lead. You go into halftime down 5-7 points but you feel that you’ll come back in the second half, but suddenly the dog says “Hey, we can beat these guys”, and before you know it there is 5 minutes left and you are in “deep shit”.
This has been the pattern that has played out over and over this week, and if you really look at the way that we spelt it out it actually make sense. When we fill out our brackets we normally always take the 27-5 winner of the “Big Northwest Southland Valley American Conference” over the team that finished 19-11 in one of the power conferences and has lost 5 of its last 7 coming in. It not “rocket science” here and it actually makes sense.
There are any number of the bottom seeds that will win again this weekend but we want to give you 3 that we feel you can make you a little money on at America’s Bookie. Let’s start with Yale; there is no better team at playing team ball which is what we believe in, setting picks, moving the ball and hitting the open man.
Duke is kinda similar as well, but this is not your “grandfather’s” Duke Team, they can always be beat on any given day. The kids from the Ivy League are getting 6 points here and they will either win this game or go down trying. Take the points.
We loved Hawaii yesterday and they could win again vs. Maryland. They took out our Alma Mata Long Beach St. in the Conference tourney, after losing to them twice in the regular season, so we really want them to lose, but just like Yale they will win this game vs. Maryland or it will be very close. Take the 6.5 point spot.
Another 6 point dog is Middle Tennessee St. vs. Syracuse. You saw how good they looked vs. Michigan St. yesterday, playing the game like they didn’t have a care in the world and “runnin and gunnin”. Syracuse is not Michigan St., take the dog here.
If you noticed a pattern there is one. An experienced smaller school vs. a so-so team from a bigger conference. All of these games will be fun to watch and the lower seeds are not going down easy. It’s your choice to take the points or the money line but either way you will make money.
Enjoy the games, there are so many of the Cinderella teams left that it will be good TV and quite profitable for next few rounds. Take care guys.
