March Madness: How betting odds can help build winning brackets
March Madness is here! It's one of the greatest events on the sports calendar, especially if you're building a bracket and competing against your friends or colleagues.
Many of us haven't been locked into college basketball for months like some die-hard fans, but you can still put together a bracket with winning upside despite not knowing the best players from High Point or McNeese State.
If you're just beginning your March Madness research, the best place to start is with betting odds. Millions of dollars will be wagered on the NCAA Tournament, and sharp money within that sum helps create efficient lines that project outcomes more accurately than any other resource.
Let's break down how to create a bracket with winning potential using betting odds.
Championship winner odds
| Team | Odds | Implied probability |
|---|---|---|
| Duke | +320 | 23.8% |
| Michigan | +375 | 21.1% |
| Arizona | +390 | 20.4% |
| Florida | +750 | 11.8% |
| Houston | +1200 | 7.7% |
| Iowa State | +1800 | 5.3% |
| Connecticut | +2200 | 4.3% |
| Illinois | +2200 | 4.3% |
| Purdue | +2200 | 4.3% |
First things first: The goal when building a bracket is to have the best one in your pool, not a perfect one. If you become too fixated on perfection, you'll make choices that lead to your bracket's demise.
The nine teams listed above are soaking up all the win equity, meaning the betting market is extremely confident that the national champion will be one of them. Venturing outside of this group to find your winner isn't advised.
The top three teams - Duke, Michigan, and Arizona - have a combined implied win probability of 65.3%.
However, those three will likely be the most popular selections in your pool. That's where expected value comes into play, as picking the champion correctly is the most important piece of a winning bracket.
If Duke has an implied win probability of 23.8% but 40% of your pool chooses the Blue Devils to win, they become a bad pick in terms of expected value. Not only would you need them to win the title at +320 odds, you'd also have to construct a better bracket than every other entry that selected them.
While you won't know which teams your peers pick until the games begin, you can get a sense as tipoff nears. If you suspect that Duke is popular among your pool and Arizona is being overlooked, going with the Wildcats is the better option, especially if you think the percentage of those picking them is lower than the team's implied win probability of 20.4%. For example, if you and two other people choose Arizona in your 20-person pool (15%), you gain leverage over your competition and sit in great position to take home the top prize if the Wildcats win.
Then again, there's a 34.7% chance that none of the top three teams win the tournament, so there's also reason to look elsewhere. If you're likely the only one in your 20-person pool taking Florida or Houston, you'd be better off going that route.
The same logic - selecting teams that help you gain leverage over your competitors - applies to picking Elite Eight and Final Four teams using quarterfinal and region winner odds.
Odds to reach Sweet 16
| Seed | East | South | West | Midwest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Duke (-600) | Florida (-450) | Arizona (-700) | Michigan (-900) |
| 2 | UConn (-200) | Houston (-275) | Purdue (-350) | Iowa St. (-400) |
| 3 | Michigan St. (-130) | Illinois (-400) | Gonzaga (-250) | Virginia (-135) |
| 4 | Kansas (+125) | Nebraska (-105) | Arkansas (-155) | Alabama (-130) |
| 5 | St. John's (-105) | Vanderbilt (-110) | Wisconsin (+110) | Texas Tech (+105) |
| 6 | Louisville (+150) | North Carolina (+600) | BYU (+425) | Tennessee (+130) |
| 7 | UCLA (+200) | Saint Mary's (+375) | Miami (FL) (+400) | Kentucky (+550) |
| 8 | Ohio St. (+550) | Clemson (+750) | Villanova (+1000) | Georgia (+900) |
| 9 | TCU (+1600) | Iowa (+700) | Utah St. (+1000) | Saint Louis (+1500) |
| 10 | UCF (+1400) | Texas A&M (+900) | Missouri (+1000) | Santa Clara (+800) |
| 11 | USF (+1200) | VCU (+750) | Texas / NC St. (+1200) | SMU (+1000) / Miami (OH) (+6600) |
| 12 | N. Iowa (+1200) | McNeese St. (+1800) | High Point (+2500) | Akron (+2000) |
Getting to the second weekend of the tournament with your bracket intact is crucial to winning your pool, and using Sweet 16 odds will put you in the best position to do so.
Cinderella teams make the tourney fun, but picking the wrong ones can ruin your chances of having a competitive bracket. You might think Missouri has a good opportunity to reach the Sweet 16, but the betting market is only giving them a 9.1% chance to do so. Is it really worth the risk of ruining your bracket for such an unlikely event? Probably not.
You could easily build out your Sweet 16 teams by looking solely at the odds. Each region has at least two heavy favorites. Then it comes down to being on the right side of coin flips while avoiding the long shots whom many will back but likely get wrong.
Opening-round lines
Using the first-round spreads is also beneficial in making your picks. Some people blindly choose upsets because they believe that they should select a certain number of underdogs. But taking 20-point underdogs, such as Kennesaw State over Gonzaga or Penn over Illinois, burns you far more frequently than it pays off.
Spreads are particularly helpful when the betting market disagrees with a team's seeding. For example, North Carolina is a 6-seed but only a 2.5-point favorite over 11-seed VCU. The market indicates that the game is closer to a coin flip than the seeding suggests, which means taking the Rams could provide leverage over your pool if the majority of others pick the Tar Heels.
Additionally, Utah State and Iowa State are 9-seeds, but both are 2.5-point favorites over Villanova and Clemson, respectively. Picking the lower seed may look like an upset on paper, but in reality, you're siding with the betting market and possibly the better team.
Be sure to study all the spreads from the Round of 64 - and the entire lineup of futures markets - before filling out your bracket. If you do, you'll have a considerable leg up on the competition.
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