Joseph D'Amico
Mark Franco
Mark Franco helped start Vegas Insider in 1997 and worked under some of the most well respected handicappers in the Nation.
Craig Trapp
Craig has been handicapping for 10 years. Over that 10 years he learned how to study games and the lines and developed a winning strategy.
Bobby Conn
One of the sharpest minds in the handicapping business.
Tony Karpinski
TonyK (3G-Sports) has won several handicapping contests especially in football, as he finished in the top 10 in the renowned NFL Las Vegas Hilton $500,000.
Final Four Preview 2011 by Jim Feist
It is a great weekend for sports fans with the Final Four and the culmination of the college basketball season next Monday in Houston for the national championship. It is clear that it is not the teams the start the season hot, but the ones that get hot when it really matters — March and April!
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. Villanova is a good example, winning 16 of 17 to start the season, then breaking down with injuries and poor play, finishing 3-10 SU, 1-12 ATS. Four years ago Clemson started 17-0, then failed to even make the Big Dance after a 4-10 SU, 5-9 ATS run. Kansas may have won the title three years ago, but six years ago it was a very different story: 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 13½-point favorite.
Other times an easy early season schedule, youth, bad coaching, 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 Florida after winning back-to-back titles and prevented a North Carolina repeat in 2010.
No. 1 seed Pitt saw its hopes crushed in a loss to Butler, 71-70. This is nothing new. A few years ago No. 2 seed Georgetown took itself out of the tournament, blowing a 46-29 lead by trying to stall against Davidson with far too much time left.
Four years ago Wisconsin was a No. 2 seed, but suffered a key late season loss in 6-11 Brian Butch, their leading rebounder and third-leading scorer. They weren’t the same group, getting smacked by Ohio State in the Big 10 tourney and an upset loss to UNLV in the Big Dance.
It is 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 nine Finals Fours?
Score – Line
2010
Butler 52 – 1.5
Michigan State 50 – 125
West Virginia 57 – 130
Duke 78 – -2.5
2009:
Michigan State 82 – 135
UConn 73 – 4
North Carolina 83 – 7.5
Villanova 69 – 160
2008:
Kansas 84 – 158
North Carolina 66 – 3
UCLA 63 – 135
Memphis 78 – 3
2007:
Georgetown 60 – 1
Ohio St. 67 – 130
UCLA 66 – 131
Florida 76 – 3
2006:
G. 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 – -4½
Kansas 94 – 153½
Syracuse 95 – 153
Texas 84 – -3
2002:
Indiana 73 – 134
Oklahoma 64 -6½
Maryland 97 – 168
Kansas 88 – -1½
What stands out is that it has been the day of the dog. The underdog is 10-7 against the number, with nine dogs winning straight up. In addition, the games have gone 10-8 “over” the total, although the “under” is 6-4 the last five years. 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 six years the favorites are 8-4 ATS. So if you had used that dog strategy the last two years you would have gone 4-8.
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 nine years the “over” has gone 10-8 in the Final Four. The three years before that the “under” prevailed at a 5-1 clip. That’s just 13-11 under the last 12 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 14 years, there have been 18 “unders” and 14 “overs” in the Final Four, with 16 dogs covering while 16 favorites have gotten the money. Again, trends are worth examining, but there needs 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 13 of the 16 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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