March Madness Bracket Tips + Bets
March Madness is such a fun, unique sports environment that encapsulates the sports world during this time of year. From the moment Selection Sunday happens, it seems all my free time is spend researching trends, profiles and matchups to create the best bracket and have the best bets.
Since I turned 21, I’ve taken a trip out to Las Vegas every weekend with my best friends as we bet and watch every single game possible and enjoy the exciting atmosphere that this weekend brings.
I should note that I probably watch at most like three to five college basketball games during the season, but have still found tons of success each year either in my brackets with friends or just betting futures on teams by looking at historical trends and profiles.
With watching minimal games like I have there is certainly some context that I can miss by doing this, but I try to make up all of that by following sharp people who are plugged in and reading their analysis. A lot of times this helps me really understand who a team is and where their strengths and weaknesses lie.
And while I do a lot of research, not all of it is independent and I rely on some of the following sites for information when it comes to this:
Overview on the Tournament
It feels like this year the tournament is as wide open as it has been in recent memory. We tend to have much stronger elite teams heading into the tournament. There’s always one or two teams who are extremely elite both offensively and defensively.
Dating back to 2002 there’s only been one other tournament (2017) in which no team was top 10 in offense and defensive adjusted efficiency on KenPom. Houston is close being 11th in adjusted offensive efficiency and 4th in defensive efficiency.
Houston is also the only team to be top 15 in both offense and defense. We normally see anywhere between three to five teams every year hit this threshold.
In 2017 in which no teams were both top 10 in offense and defense, we still had four teams that were top 15 in both offense and defense.
There’s an argument this could be one of the weakest tournaments that we’ve seen in quite some time. And we should know that because of this there is opportunities for a lot of crazy things to happen, even more than most years.
When creating brackets and placing bets we should go with the mindset of this.
But this also might create an edge in terms of really shortening the list of real contenders to win the title.
What to look for in a Championship Team
This thread by Connor Allen does a fantastic job of looking at what type of profiles we need to hone in on for a national champion.
Offense matters
First, the team has to be a great offensive team.
60% of the champions were top four in adjusted offense!
The top four this year:
Gonzaga
Baylor
Iowa
Arizona
Who are some other teams that check this box of being in the top 21?
Connecticut
Purdue
Marquette
Xavier
Missouri
Houston
Miami
Utah St
Kentucky
West Virginia
Providence
Penn St
Texas
Alabama
These are all the teams that check this very important box and should help hone our list down a bit.
Defense also matters
Not surprising that the teams that won the title were balanced teams that were both very good offensively AND defensively.
So let’s look at the teams that qualified offensively and hit these thresholds defensively. The list is as follows:
Arizona (4th offense/41st defense)
Connecticut (6th offense/18th defense)
Purdue (7th offense/26th defense)
Houston (11th offense/4th defense)
Texas (18th offense/11th defense)
Alabama (19th offense/3rd defense)
That’s it. That’s the list. It should be noted Arizona is on the back end defensively of the previous winners we’ve seen, but offers that elite offense.
If you’re creating a bracket or betting on a team to win it all it’s very likely to come from this list.
It should be noted a few teams barely missed the cut here:
Marquette (8th offense/47th defense)
UCLA (25th offense/1st defense)
Kansas (29th offense/7th defense)
UCLA lost one of their best players for the tournament, but should still pose as a strong contender. Kansas is in a brutal bracket as the one seed, but offers enough balance to make a run.
We will touch on Marquette in just a second.
Final Four Teams
Just spitballing quick stats here from the last 20 years of data on KenPom
70 of 80 Final Four teams were top 15 in Adjusted Efficiency Margin (AEM)
68 of 80 teams had an AEM of 22.0 or higher
51 of 80 teams had an AEM of 25.0 or higher
62 of 80 teams were top 10 in AEM
45 of 80 teams were top 5 in AEM
66 of 80 teams were top 30 in adjusted offense
67 of 80 teams were top 30 in adjusted defense
55 of 80 teams were top 30 in both adjusted offense and defense
78 of 80 teams were top 30 in either adjusted offense or defense
44 of 80 teams were top 10 in adjusted offense
41 of 80 teams were top 10 in adjusted defense
64 of 80 teams were top 10 in either adjusted offense or defense
8 of 80 teams were outside of the top 50 in either adjusted offense or defense
What can we take away from this?
Balance is key to sustaining long tournament runs!
It’s shocking that there were only eight teams that made it despite being outside the top 50 in either offense or defense. Of these eight, we’ve seen more bad offenses make it due to phenomenal defense than we have the other way around.
Over the last 18 tournaments there has only been one team to make the Final Four having an adjusted defense outside the top 50 and that was VCU’s magical run in 2011 - a clear outlier.
We can almost cross off any team that doesn’t fit these criteria as it’s very unlikely one of these teams makes the Final Four.
Who are the teams we should consider avoiding?
I’m really only going to focus on top six seeds here so we can hone in on teams that might be overrated.
Gonzaga is a hot commodity finishing the season strong, but they’re 76th in adjusted defense. It wouldn’t be shocking to see them not make it out of the first weekend.
San Deigo St. is 64th in adjusted offense. They might be able to win a couple games, but unlikely to make a deep run.
Baylor is 104th in adjusted defense. They’re a big fade.
Xavier is 70th in adjusted defense. We’re sensing a theme here with the three seeds. Lots of offense, but no defense.
Iowa St. is 96th in adjusted offense.
Kansas St. is 52nd in adjusted offense. They’re right on the border so maybe we shouldn’t completely rule them out, but still something to keep in the back of our mind.
TCU is 53rd in adjusted offense. Basically identical profile to Kansas St.
Kentucky is 71st in adjusted defense.
Virginia is 74th in adjusted offense.
Miami is 132nd in adjusted defense.
So of the top 24 seeds we’ve almost eliminated 10 as legit candidates for Final Four appearances. This should really help us with identifying the remaining teams that are viable.
Paper Tigers
These next two sections are going to be terms and profiles spotted and researched by Ken Barkley. In my opinion he’s the best in the industry in terms of spotting specific profiles in all futures markets and what to look for in these areas. Simply following his work has made me a much smarter (and richer) bettor.
I’ll give a quick breakdown of what a Paper Tiger is, but I’d recommend checking out Ken’s full piece on it right here.
There are three criteria a team has to hit in order to be a “Paper Tiger”:
Top six seed in your region
Top 25 raw offense
Outside the top 150 in raw defense
There’s been 24 teams to qualify as a Paper Tiger since 2002 and here were some of the results.
None of these teams have made a Final Four! And only two of these teams have even made an Elite Eight.
The teams that made it far had some lucky matchup breaks that allowed them to even get that far.
Recent memory last year was Iowa and Purdue qualified for this. Iowa lost round one and Purdue lost to a 15 seed in the Sweet Sixteen.
Some of the more memorable upsets in the first and second rounds involve teams that were Paper Tigers including two 15 seeds upsetting a 2 seed in the first round.
It’s obviously around a similar point here that I’m trying to get across that teams must be balanced and the ones that aren’t historically get upset early.
We’re lucky this year because we have four Paper Tigers this season which is the most in a single season over the past 20 years. So we have four teams we desperately want to fade.
Those teams are:
Gonzaga (1st in raw offense/171st in raw defense)
Miami (8th in raw offense/201st in raw defense)
Baylor (14th in raw offense/190th in raw defense)
Xavier (16th in raw offense/167th in raw defense)
We already mentioned these teams as unlikely Final Four candidates, but we have to seriously consider the prospects of these teams potentially not even making it out of the first weekend.
If you’re in a bracket, I would refuse to have any of them going past the Sweet Sixteen. A lot would have to go right in order for them to advance far.
Late Bloomers
Another term coined by Ken amid a new research project he came across. He looked at all these teams over the last six years and I got inspired to add to the sample and have it going all the way back to 2008.
Ken goes into great detail about what constitutes a “Late Bloomer”, but I’ll give a quick explanation and some data regarding them.
The main theory is that teams that get hot in the final month of the season without showing similar success for a majority of the year tend to underwhelm in the tournament due to them likely being overseeded due to the recent performances.
How this is define is by a cut off of a teams BartTorvik rankings before and after February 15th.
If a team was ranked 10 spots higher Post February 15th than they were in the first three months and were a top six seed in their region they would be considered a Late Bloomer.
There’s been 58 teams to qualify for this since 2008 and only ONE has made it to the Final Four.
26 of these 58 (45%) teams lost in the first game which is a pretty shocking number considering they’re all favorites and higher seeds.
40 of these 58 teams (69%) were eliminated by round two and didn’t advance to the Sweet Sixteen.
39 of these 58 teams (67%) were eliminated by an upset to a team with a worse seeding than them.
I wanted to see if there was a bigger difference if we expanded this to teams that jumped 20 spots in the rankings in this time frame to see if we would get a better result.
Only 9 of 23 teams (39%) lost in the first round, but 17 of 23 teams were eliminated by round 2 (73%).
This number jumps to 21 of 23 (91%) eliminated by the Sweet Sixteen and didn’t advance to the Elite Eight.
It should be noted Michigan here is a massive outlier. They made it to the Finals in 2018 after being 28th pre February 15th and 1st post February 15th.
They actually faced Houston in the second round and beat them by one point. This matters because Houston was also a massive Late Bloomer that season finishing 24 spots ahead of where they were Pre February 15th. Something had to give here.
Michigan (3 seed) went on to face a 7 seed, 9 seed and 11 seed on their way to the Finals before getting dismantled by 17 in the Championship. This is probably the luckiest run in NCAA history in terms of matchups and easily could’ve lost in the second round.
Who are these teams this year?
We have four that fit the criteria:
Gonzaga (16th pre/1st post)
Texas (12th pre/2nd post)
Duke (37th pre/4th post)
Kentucky (44th pre/7th post)
These are all very strong bets to not make it to the Elite Eight, let alone the Final Four. Texas is a borderline one and has a somewhat easier path so maybe the aren’t considered as much here.
It’s crazy that Gonzaga now has multiple different types of profiles that have red flags. They’re a massive fade this tournament, especially in the toughest region.
Duke is getting lots of love for being a team on fire right now, but we know these teams tend to fizzle out. Facing a great Oral Roberts team round 1 presents a tough matchup off the get go.
Kentucky has the 2nd biggest difference in this dataset from pre to post rankings here. The only two other teams to see a 35+ jump in rankings lost their first round game.
Preseason Rankings
I woke up yesterday and saw this VERY interesting tweet that changed my whole perspective on the tournament and a specific region in particular.
WILD. This blew my mind considering the concentration of one and two seeds we see every year in the Final Four.
It somewhat makes sense considering a lot of preseason rankings are based off the talent profile of a team. Unlike professional leagues where you can add players via trade or waivers during the season, you’re mainly stuck with your team and therefore only have certain upside cases with the talent you have on your roster.
Still this is pretty crazy and now completely dampers the cases for both Purdue and Marquette who happen to be in the same bracket.
East Region
I’m going to be honest this might be the most chaotic region I can ever remember. It might be the worst region in the past 15-20 years of the tournament.
We have four of the top six seeds in this region with massive red flags! We just mentioned the big red flags with Purdue and Marquette that tend to heavily underperform.
We also have Duke and Kentucky who are substantial Late Bloomers and don’t have the easiest first round matchups.
Naturally Tennessee would be a great pivot point here as they’re 5th overall in KenPom’s rankings with the 2nd best defense in the country, but they just lost their best player for the season a couple weeks ago. They’ve gone 1-2 without him since that injury. With him being their point guard and facilitator running the offense this is different than most injuries because they really don’t have a guard that can facilitate like him now.
So of the top seeds Kansas State now is really only the one left standing. They’re a pretty weak three seed by all measures and are 51st in offense which is just outside the top 50 threshold we want our Final Four teams to be in. Still they might have a somewhat easy path especially if Kentucky falters and Marquette goes down.
Michigan State as a 7th seed doesn’t bring much fear here, but they’re balanced currently ranked 40th in offense and defense. I’m not excited about them at all, but they could find themselves an easy path.
The eight and nine matchup now becomes where the most intrigue in the region comes from. Memphis is seemingly under-seeded as an eight. They’re 19th in KenPom’s rankings which is the third highest in this region behind Purdue and Marquette. They have a balanced attack with a 26th ranked offense and 36th ranked defense and don’t have any glaring red flags in their profile.
Memphis and Tennessee are truly the only teams in this region without a red flag in their profile even if it’s not spectacular.
Florida Atlantic is interesting because their profile is a slightly worse one than Memphis and if they take them out in the first round could be a very sneaky team to come out of this region.
Overall in this region either one of two things will happen: An outlier with a red flag will prevail due to the weak competition in this region OR a team that is considered a longshot will come out of this region.
I think there’s plenty of value here in taking longshots. Coming in with the perspective of “I don’t know how these teams with red flags will falter, but they will” and the remaining teams will figure it out is kind of my approach and tons of upside if this is the way.
Bets for the region
Kansas State to make the Final Four +1200 (Fanduel)
Risk .2 units to win 2.4 units
Play to +1000
Kansas State to make the Sweet Sixteen +160 (PointsBet)
Risk 1 unit to win 1.6 units
Memphis to make the Final Four +1800 (BetRivers/Barstool)
Risk .3 units to win 5.4 units
Play to +1400
Purdue to NOT make the Sweet Sixteen +190 (Caesars)
Risk 1 unit to win 1.9 units
Play to +175
Florida Atlantic to make the Final Four +4000 (BetRivers/Barstool)
Risk .1 units to win 4 units
Play to +3000
Memphis to make the Sweet Sixteen +400 (DraftKings)
Risk .5 units to win 2 units
Play to +375
Tennessee to make the Sweet Sixteen -105 (Caesars)
Risk 1.05 units to win 1 unit
Play to -110
Oral Roberts moneyline vs Duke +240 (Caesars)
Risk .5 units to win 1.2 units
Play to +220
Providence moneyline vs Kentucky +158 (Caesars)
Risk 1 unit to win 1.58 units
Play to +150
West Region
This is the most loaded region and it’s not really close. If only they could’ve put one of Kansas, UCLA, Connecticut or even like a St. Marys in the East.
This region has 5 of the top 11 teams according to KenPom in this region.
Gonzaga is in this region and we mentioned multiple times why they’re a big fade. When looking at futures I’m almost eliminating them from my mind and really honing in on the other teams.
Knowing that Gonzaga is a fade, this actually opens up the bottom part of the bracket for UCLA. They’re second in KenPom with the top ranked defense right now. They lost their third best player for the season, but still played well in the Pac 12 tournament and still have great pieces to make a deep run.
If they were to play Gonzaga they would matchup extremely well against them.
Kansas is a sub-par number one seed and don’t boast the ideal type of offense we are looking for from a national champion. They profile more as a Final Four team than one that can win it all. I like them, but considering the bracket and the tough games they might have in front of them it could be best to slightly fade them.
Connecticut is a really fun team and one I had my eye on as an underrated squad before Selection Sunday. They probably drew the most brutal schedule of any team in the tournament. A potential round two matchup against St. Marys isn’t easy and if they win that then a date against Kansas looms. And then a potential UCLA matchup, and then potentially Houston. You get it. Not easy.
But what makes Connecticut really interesting is they’re one of the few teams we mentioned early that profiles as a national champion, moreso than any other team in the West. Their four seed doesn’t give credit to them as they’re the fourth best team in KenPom and are one of four teams to have a top 20 offense and defense. They truly have a profile that is underrated and despite what may seem to be a tough schedule, they’re the team that can overcome it.
I truly believe that the winner of this region comes from one of Kansas, UCLA and Connecticut. I tend to like UCLA the most in the futures game just due to the least path of resistance.
Bets for the region
Connecticut to make the Sweet Sixteen +100 (MGM)
Risk 1 unit to win 1 unit
Play to -110
UCLA to make the Elite Eight +170 (DraftKings)
Risk 1 unit to win 1.7 units
Play to +150
Gonzaga to NOT make the Sweet Sixteen +145 (Caesars)
Risk 1 unit to win 1.45 units
Play to +130
Connecticut to win the West Region +500 (Fanduel)
Risk .5 units to win 2.5 units
Play to +400