Betting on March Madness Events [5 Tips]
Every person interested in basketball probably have heard about National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and its main event called March Madness.
This is the culmination of whole NCAA basketball season. March Madness is full of unexpected results, game-winners and true emotions.
These games are different compared to many leagues due to the fact that there 68 teams from various conferences competing for the trophy. Some of those teams face off many times throughout the season, while others rarely play strong opponents and are simply happy to make it into March Madness.
In March you can see real madness since armies of fans watch their supported teams and the format of competition is extremely enjoyable and simple. Get one loss and go home.
This year March Madness starts on March 13-14. During the First Four stage of the competition, theoretically weakest 8 teams start their journey. 4 of them will join other 60 teams, which already have secured their places in 4 different regions.
First and second stages will take place on March 15-18. Then, on March 22-25 there will be region semifinals and region finals.
Finally, there will be Final Four. Last year the final had 77 thousands of spectators at the venue.
Considering March Madness’ popularity SmartBettingGuide provide you with some betting tips.
Here are the main ones:
- Start from the start. Yes, this may sound strange and like a common sense but your betting goal should be to utilize first stages of the competition. At that time most surprises happen and you can find value in a number of games. One of the most popular tips that you will ever hear is to avoid teams in 8th and 9th seeds. Very often level of those teams is very similar but outcomes are hardly predictable. According to March Madness’ historical statistics, betting for games with these teams (during the first stage of the competition) rarely brings good value. Much better choice are matches where 5 and 12 seeds meet. One third of 12th seeded teams start their March journey with a win.
- Make an analysis. Put an emphasis on result differences compared home and away games. We all know it is important to analyze games that you are going to bet on but home/away games is the most important thing. Some teams have great fans, great venues and play much better at home. Teams like these may not handle March Madness games in neutral venues.
- Do not trust player/team stats. Statistics are an important tool used to make betting predictions but you should not rely on it. According to some researches, people who fill up box scores tend to favor the game home team. It is very often while accounting assist stats. If you do analyze stats, be more attentive to away games. Another reason not to rely on stats too much – NCAA teams play only handful of games throughout the season, therefore we do not have enough data to make good conclusions. Finally, March Madness puts huge pressure on top players who want to showcase themselves to various NBA scouts, so it is not unusual to see top players playing worse than you would expect (while others step up).
- Pay attention to the winners of smaller conferences. People often think that only teams of strongest conferences can win huge games. It is a wrong thinking. Sometimes winners of weaker conferences are stronger than average teams of good conferences. You can use that to your advantage. When you see the brackets, pay some attention not only to the seeding number but as well to regular season results.
- Make conference power rankings. There is a belief that certain popular conferences are always stronger than some other, but do your calculations. Check the results, compare non-conference games. If you understand that A and B conferences are about equal and the third team of A conference is playing the first team of B conference, then you might consider betting on the team from conference B.
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