March Madness is the most communal betting experience of the calendar year in the U.S. (sorry, Super Bowl squares) as you’re annually attempting to take money from your Aunt Ginny and next door neighbor Frank instead of a bookie or sportsbook. Now that sports betting is legal, however, you can do both.
The brackets were revealed early last night, and here are the top four seeds: Duke (East), Virginia (South), North Carolina (Midwest) and Gonzaga (West). That’s three No. 1 seeds from the ACC if you’re scoring at home. This immediately means that you should go looking for value teams from the ACC. Everyone agrees that the conference was LOADED this year.
Florida State looks like a great value team here as a four seed in the West Region. The ultra-athletic Seminoles have lost just twice in the past two months (at North Carolina and in the conference tourney against Duke … not much shame there).
Northeastern
The bad news: The Huskies drew Kansas.
The good news: The Huskies drew Kansas.
No. 13 Northeastern will take on No. 4 Kansas in the Midwest region. Kansas is a traditional powerhouse in college basketball but it has gained a reputation over the years of coming up short in March.
Make no mistake, this is not the same Kansas team that went to the Final Four last season as the team lost leader Devonte Graham to graduation.
As for the Huskies – they have been playing fast in the month of March as in their last four games they’re averaging 80.5 points per game. Averaging over 80 ppg in the college game is exceptional when you consider that the average college team this season topped out around 72 ppg.
Senior guard Vasa Pusica can spring for 20-plus points any time he steps on the floor and the Serbian guard has been hot lately – scoring over 20 points in six of his last 11 games.
Sleeper alert
You’re going to be hearing a lot about Wofford in the next few days, and for good reason. The Terriers have “sleeper” written all over them, as Fletcher Magee is arguably the best shooter in this tournament. And to pull off big upsets in the tourney, you have to be nailing your shots from deep.
Consider that in the greatest upset of all-time, No. 16 seed UMBC went 12-of-24 – 50 percent -from 3-point range in their historic win over No. 1 Virginia.
To give you an idea of how Wofford utilizes Magee against top-tier opponents, he shot a whopping 16 3-pointers in Wofford’s opening night 11-point loss to North Carolina this season. No doubt, it will be bombs away for Magee when his No. 7 seed Terriers face No. 10 Seton Hall out of the gate on Thursday.
5-12
If you have a spine, you always pick at least one 5 seed to upset a 12. Here are the 5-12 matchups this year: Mississippi State vs. Liberty (East), Marquette vs. Murray State (West), Wisconsin vs. Oregon (South) and Auburn vs. New Mexico State (Midwest).
Liberty over Mississippi State is already a crowd favorite.
