Betting Favorites Can Offer a Guide to 'Upset' Picks – New York Times
All over the country, fans are poring over their N.C.A.A. tournament brackets, looking for lower-seeded men’s basketball teams that might pull off upsets.
But what about when an upset is not really an upset at all?
In at least six games in this year’s first round, the lower-seeded team is the betting favorite, according to lines on Pinnacle Sports and elsewhere on Tuesday morning.
Interactive Feature | Potential N.C.A.A. Bracket Busters. You’ve Been Warned. The key to winning your N.C.A.A. tournament pool is picking the right teams to knock off higher-seeded opponents. Here are a few teams worth considering as you fill out your brackets.
These potential “upsets” can allow pool players to make safe picks that seem more daring than they are. And for players in pools that award bonus points for picking lower seeds, selecting these pseudo-underdogs should almost be automatic.
All four ninth seeds were favorites over the eighth seeds, with spreads from 1 ½ to 4 points. When filling out brackets, players should strongly consider selecting Butler (4-point favorite) over Texas Tech, and Connecticut (3-point favorite) over Colorado. Ninth-seeded Providence and Cincinnati were both 1 ½-point favorites, so are considered slightly more likely to win than their eighth-seeded foes, Southern California and St. Joseph’s.
But 8-9 games are usually virtual tossups. More notable are two other likely upsets in this year’s tournament.
Tenth-seeded Virginia Commonwealth was a 4 ½-point favorite over seventh-seeded Oregon State. V.C.U. finished in a three-way tie for first in the Atlantic 10, then lost the conference tournament final to St. Joseph’s. Though V.C.U. is a quality team, the line may be more indicative of a lack of confidence in Oregon State, which tied for sixth in the Pacific-12 and lost 12 times this season.
Eleventh-seeded Gonzaga was a 1 ½-point favorite, though its opponent, sixth-seeded Seton Hall, won the Big East tournament, beating the top-five teams Xavier and Villanova along the way. But Gonzaga was again one of the best teams from a midmajor conference.
Moreover, Gonzaga may be favored over No. 3 Utah in the next round, too. The well-respected computer rankings from both Ken Pomeroy and Jeff Sagarin had Gonzaga above Utah on Tuesday.
Looking further ahead, top-seeded Oregon may also be in danger of suffering a pseudo-upset. Many fans have been scratching their heads over Oregon’s high seeding, in part because the Ducks are ranked only ninth by Pomeroy and just 21st by Sagarin’s predictor ranking. Oregon could be a betting underdog not only in the regional final to second-seeded Oklahoma or third-seeded Texas A&M, but also in the regional semifinals to fourth-seeded Duke.
