NCA A Tournament by the odds: Vegas picks and preview of the Final Four
Nearly 9,000 combined wins all-time. Sixty-one Final Four appearances including 22 in the last 20 tournaments. Seventeen national championships including nine of the last 20.
The four programs in this year’s Final Four in New Orleans couldn’t be more accomplished. The name value of Duke, North Carolina, Kansas and Villanova — along with the unique storylines pertaining to each of their teams this year — is going to make for a betting bonanza with a pair of national semifinal games this afternoon.
It’s not going to be much fun without some wins, however, so let’s try to build on a successful tournament where I’ve posted a 33-29 against the spread record picking every game (11-7 on plays, 11-12 on leans and 11-10 on guesses).
Read on for picks on the pair of today’s Final Four games. Picks are labeled with one of three confidence categories and listed in rough order of confidence. Lines are the best available at publication time in Las Vegas on the chosen side. No. 2 seed Duke -4.5 vs. No. 8 seed
North Carolina: Coming into the tournament, with Duke having lost two of its last four, many were making the argument that the Blue Devils were too tight and feeling too much pressure to produce for coach Mike Krzyzewski’s swan song. Now that they’ve reached the Final Four with three consecutive covers, it’s the opposite. Suddenly, the popular perception is that they’re sure to avenge a loss to North Carolina in Krzyewski’s final home game here. The motivation is too great for the Tar Heels to have a chance.
That’s baloney, just like the reasons cited for the Blue Devils’ slip coming into
the tournament was similarly. To be a winning bettor long-term, numbers must trump narratives. The numbers speak volumes here — at least the recent ones. North Carolina has been the most efficient team in the nation over the last month, including the tournament, by Bart Torvik’s analytics. Duke barely cracks the top 20.
The Blue Devils got an easier path than the Tar Heels to the Final Four and only posted a +40 point differential in four games with late escapes in both the round of 32 and Sweet 16. North Carolina did get an overmatched Elite Eight opponent in St.
Peter’s but otherwise has faced a gauntlet and posted a +66 point differential.
Sure, a dissenter could accuse of recency bias for using that sample in support of North Carolina. But even if the parameters are extended to the full season, a fair price is Duke -4 according to popular publicly available models like Torvik’s and Ken Pomeroy’s.
At worst, there’s an extra half-point added because of the changing tides that now indicate Duke is unbeatable on a mission for its longtime coach. North Carolina’s late-season improvements, especially defensively, and current form means more to me. Play: North Carolina +4.5.
No. 1 seed Kansas -4 vs. No. 2 seed Villanova: Based on the betting market over the course of the season, Kansas was shaping up to be a 2-point favorite over Villanova. Then Justin Moore’s injury happened. The Wildcats’ second-leading scorer went down with an Achilles injury late in Villanova’s Elite 8 win over the Houston Cougars. The handicap of today’s game largely comes down to how much a bettor values Moore and accounts for his absence.
Is 2 points — or 2.5 as most sports books are currently at Kansas -4.5 — too much or too little? Without any other specifics, it might sound like too much for a game with a low over/under total of 133. But in the case of Villanova, it might instead be too little. The Wildcats don’t have much of a bench and stick strictly to a 6-man rotation. Oh, and the one player who’s more important than Moore on the roster, Collin Gillespie, is also nursing injuries — adding a sore knee suffered in a Sweet 16 win over Michigan to an ankle that’s bothered him for months.
It didn’t seem to matter much against Houston, but the Cougars went 1-for-20 from the 3-point line. With the way Kansas is producing offensively, it’s hard to believe the Jayhawks struggle to that extent under any cirumstance. The biggest concern for Kansas might be Villanova coach Jay Wright out-scheming Bill Self, something that’s happened in each of the last two times the programs have met in the NCA A Tournament.
But that still may not overcome the personnel differential that’s come in the wake of losing Moore. Kansas -4.5 is probably a fair price. I’m sitting on a 14-to-1 futures position on the Jayhawks, so adding more and actually betting on them is out of the question. But I’m also not interested in any arbitrage unless the Wildcats climb to the key number of +5.
Kansas -4.