The Final Four!
It's a great weekend for sports fans with the Final Four and the culmination of the college basketball season next Monday in Atlanta for the national championship. It's clear that it's not the teams the start the season hot, but the ones that get hot when it really matters - March!
Many things happen over the course of a long season. Some teams play great basketball in December and January, only to break down from injuries or run out of steam down the stretch. Clemson is a perfect example, starting 17-0, then failing to make the Big Dance after a 4-10 SU, 5-9 ATS run. A similar thing happened to Kansas two years ago. The Jayhawks started 20-1, only to go 3-6 straight up and 1-8 against the spread the last nine games. They never made it to the Final Four because of a 64-63 loss to Bucknell as a 13.5-point favorite.
Other times an easy early season schedule, youth, untimely injuries, bad luck, poor team chemistry or a combination of these can cut down a potentially great team. Youth and a loss of its best players certainly fell defending champion North Carolina last year at this time, which got knocked off early by George Mason. Oddsmakers overvalued George Washington last season after a 26-1 start because injuries took a serious toll. The Colonials went 0-4-1 ATS their final 5 games, with early exits in the Atlantic 10 tourney and the NCAA tournament.
Wisconsin took a No. 2 seed into this year's tournament, but suffered a key late season loss in 6-11 junior Brian Butch, their leading rebounder and third-leading scorer. They weren't the same team, getting smacked by Ohio State in the Big 10 tourney and an upset loss to UNLV in the Big Dance.
It's very easy for sports bettors to look into trends to try and predict the future. Trends can be helpful if there are reasons to support it. For example, from a betting perspective, what stands out about the last five Finals Fours?
2006: ----- LINE
George Mason 58 -- 132
Florida 73 -- -6
LSU 45 -- -2
UCLA 59 -- 123
2005:
Louisville 57 -- 144
Illiniois 72 -- -3
Michigan St. 71 -- 153
North Carolina 87 -- -2
2004:
Georgia Tech 67 -- 139
Oklahoma St. 65 -- -4
UConn 79 -- -2
Duke 78 -- 144
2003:
Marquette 61 -- -4.5
Kansas 94 -- 153.5
Syracuse 95 -- 153
Texas 84 -- -3
2002:
Indiana 73 -- 134
Oklahoma 64 -- 6.5
Maryland 97 -- 168
Kansas 88 -- -1.5
What stands out is that it has been the day of the dog the last four years. The underdog is 7-3 against the number, with six dogs winning straight up, including UCLA last season. In addition, the games have gone 6-4 "over" the total, although last season both Final Four games sailed "under." You can even make an argument that this would be the right time of the college hoops' season to take a shot with the dog on the money-line. However, this is where one needs patience, because trends can also be a fool's paradise. The last two years the favorites are 3-1 ATS. So if you had used that dog strategy the last two years you would have gone 1-3.
If you go back to the previous three Final Fours before that survey, 1999-01, we find Duke topping Maryland 95-84, Arizona blowing out Michigan State 80-61, Michigan State beating Wisconsin 53-41, Florida topping North Carolina 71-59, UConn beating Ohio State 64-58 and Duke surviving Michigan State 68-62. What stands out is that the favorite won and covered in five of six, for a hefty 5-1 spread record.
Even looking at totals, a similar pattern emerges. The last five years the "over" has gone 6-4 in the Final Four. The three years before that the "under" prevailed at a 5-1 clip. That's just 9-7 under the last eight years. All of a sudden, those who look solely at trends as the key to the sports betting kingdom are stuck at close to a .500 winning percentage ATS.
For the record, going back the last 12 years, there have been 14 "unders" and 10 "overs" in the Final Four, with 13 dogs covering while 11 favorites have gotten the money. Again, trends are worth examining, but there has to be reasons behind them if you're serious about putting down hard earned money on a side. Perhaps the most significant stat that stands out is that 10 of the 13 dogs that covered ended up winning the game outright, which shows how competitive and relatively evenly matched the games become when teams get this far in the season.
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