2010 NCAA Tournament Props (Tuesday)

Last updated at 9:28pm EST, see below. Also, join the VW ESPN Tournament Challenge group -- free to enter, $100 prize for the winner.

Well, we definitely got Bodog's attention yesterday, as the #16 props are now 8-1, and "Other" in the "Lowest seed to reach Final Four" prop is +225. Here's another good one, at Sportsbook:

This same prop is -152/+132 at Pinnacle, so the value in -130 is rather obvious. But I think even Pinny is underestimating the bottom 12. According to their current money lines, here are the odds to win outright for 11 of them (ignoring Duke's opponent):

These numbers put the fair value for the prop at -180, so I think it's a good bet even at Pinnacle.

Update (9:28pm): And now, for something completely different:

As you can imagine, this props has the potential to be VERY controversial. They were nice enough to specify regarding Duke, but do you know which of these categories the Syracuse Orangeman would fall into? I didn't. Luckily, The TMLJ was around to investigate into this issue. After some frustrating back-and-forth with Bodog customer service, here is the answer he eventually got:

We would like to first apologize for the miscommunication in reference to your prop wager.Please note we consider man a fruit and not a human.

So, man is not -- as generally follows -- considered a human, but a fruit. I must admit this is beyond my understanding, but I can accept that. Score the Cuse under "Other". We were then concerned that we may be misguided regarding the species identity of other mascots as well, and thus asked about Ohio St.:

The TMLJ: Do you consider Buckeye a plant or a man?

Bodog: In regards to your inquiry, because Buckeye mascot is made to resemble a nut and therefore we will classify this mascot as "Other".

Definitely an impressive comeback for "Other", but unfortunately not enough for there to be any value in it. In fact, it appears that Bodog has handicapped this prop quite accurately:

If you are curious, and how could you not be, the mascots and species identities for each tournament team can be found here. I do not guarantee 100% accuracy.

Guessing the Seeds: Final Standings

I am just so disgusted by this:

The four rounds don't add up to the total since, as previously specified, they are weighted differently, (100%, 75%, 50%, 25% from rounds one to four). This arbitrary scoring decision put The TMLJ over the top, since his four rounds only add up to 146 (Chrismch30's sum to 151), but his early dominance vaults him to the top.

Soul Pole had the best first round, and then didn't submit an entry after that. He still held steady with 29 every month, since if you missed a round I just carried the prior round's picks over, but some fresh picks in February and March would have helped. Chrismch30 had the best performance this past Sunday, with 59 out of a possible 72 before the weighting, but it wasn't quite enough.

Thanks to everybody who entered; the full standings are here. I will post the details of the 2010 MLB Totals Contest next week.

2010 NCAA Tournament Survivor: Round One

I'm not sure how popular these pools are, but I have a total of six entries into them, which makes it deserving of a post in my book. The ideas is the same as NFL Survivor: keep picking a team to win outright until you lose, can't pick the same team twice. In the pools that I'm in, you have to make a pick every day of the tournament (10 days total); in some, it's just every round. Those two formats require significantly different strategies, since you have to be a lot more conservative in the early rounds if 10 picks are needed.

Anyway, here are some ideas for the first couple days.

Thursday

Kentucky (-19.5) vs. East Tennessee St.

Yes, really. When are you going to be comfortable taking the Cats after this one? Maybe I'm the only one left, but Texas is still scary to me, and I think that R2 line will be pretty short (UK -5.5?) if they meet. And after that it's Wisconsin, West Virginia, and then the Final Four. The one issue here is that although none of those games will have big spreads, at some point toward the end of this the spreads are less important and you just want to have teams that are still alive. I think UK is a better option in a six pick pool than a 10-pick contest, but not great in either.

New Mexico (-9) vs. Montana

Don't know if I'm going to be able to top this one. Yes, the Lobos are absurdly overrated and overseeded, but the benefit of the latter comes through here, as they draw a weak Montana team. New Mexico is about 79% to win this one, but more importantly they are totally useless after Thursday. They would not even be a Survivor consideration against either Marquette or Washington, and certainly not against WVU if they reach the Sweet 16. They will then be huge underdogs in every game if they somehow make it into the Elite 8. This is a pretty ideal option.

Georgetown (-13.5) vs. Ohio

This isn't terrible, but the Hoyas will be favored in their second round game, and could also be a good pick in the Sweet 16 if Ohio St. is upset this weekend. Georgetown is a threat to go deep as well, and unlike New Mexico would be a team you'd actually like to be able to pick at that point.

Texas (-4.5) vs. Wake Forest

The Lobos seem like an unusually strong option, but Texas is a solid choice too. The Horns are 66% to win Thursday, and if they advance UT will not be the greatest Survivor option in history when they face Kentucky. In the Sweet 16 they would inherit UK's draw, and we all know how unpleasant that is. The Longhorns are a bit risky, but their absence of future value is impressive considering they're -210 in round one.

Friday

Pittsburgh (-10) vs. Oakland

The appeal here is Pitt's opponent, with the Panthers having drawn a very weak #14. This allows Pitt, overseeded themselves, to be a double-digit favorite. They would face the Xavier-Minnesota winner on Sunday, and wouldn't be a comfortable Survior pick in either matchup -- those three teams are all about equal if you can get past the number next to their name.

Michigan St. (-13.5) vs. New Mexico St.

The Midwest may be the region from hell, but that doesn't really get started until the weekend. So Friday seems like a great opportunity to pick the MW's #5 seed, which will be thrown into the Maryland/Kansas/tOSU/Georgetown fire if they can get by NMSU. None of those will be viable options, and the odds MSU makes it through that nightmare are quite low.

Nothing else on Friday looks great. Maryland could work, but I'm not sure how that's better than Michigan St. If you only have to do one pick in round one I'd go with New Mexico. For daily picks, the Lobos and Spartans seem like the way to go.

2010 NCAA Tournament Props (Monday)

Last updated at 8:19pm EST; see below.

Going to have one of these posts each of the next three days, and just add to it as the night goes on since this stuff is time sensitive. Here's one from Bodog:

The value here lies with "Other" at 11-1. That gives you half the field after the play-in game; it's the bad half of course, but you just need one team to sneak through. Here's the breakdown, according to both my latest numbers and the juice-adjusted Pinnacle "to win region" odds:

The way to read that is that there's a 84.9% chance that the team coming out of the West region will be a 1-8 seed, according to the Pinnacle odds.

Breakeven for 11-1 is 8.3%. You will note that the two numbers on the bottom row are nowhere near 8.3%. The last two Marches have been very chalky, and people have very short memories, but there's about a 1 in 3 chance that a 9+ seed reaches Indianapolis. 11-1 is great value, limit is risk $100.

8:17pm EST edit:

Here's another good one, again from Bodog:

My obsession with #16 seeds is well documented, but also justified. The odds here for a top seed losing in the first round aren't quite as crazy as last year's 30-1, but the matchups are also more favorable. Even ignoring Duke (opponent TBD) and KU (spread is so high that there's no money line):


Even if you're super conservative and give Kansas and Duke each a 99% chance of winning, the 16s come in at 10.6%, or +848. This line has actually since been moved from 16-1 to 12-1, but that's still value.

8:19pm EST edit: The "lowest seed to reach the F4" prop has been taken down.

Interpreting the First Round Lines

A few early thoughts on the first round lines, more in a macro sense than focusing on any particular game:

When the bracket was first announced and I was looking at projected lines for each game according to my ratings, I started noticing that in the middle of the bracket, the lines looked to be pretty close to pick'ems, even when there was a notable seed difference between the two teams (say, 6-11). Sure enough, my ratings don't have much of a difference between the average six seed and the average 11:

(X-axis is seed, y-axis is my rating of the average team on that seed line.)

I actually have the average six as 0.4 points worse than the average #11, and the graph is very flat between those two. Really, there is a steep dropoff from the 1s to the 2s, then another between the 2s and the 3s, but the average 3/4 is only a couple points better than the average 11.

I wondered if this would come though in the lines as well, and it indeed did. The following graph shows the average spread for each seed; the average for #1s will probably go up a bit after the play-in game when the Duke line is released.

There's more of a dropoff from 3-6 here, but that's mostly because the average #14 is a lot worse than the average #11. For the most part, we see the same thing; there are really about seven elite teams, and then 35 or so that are roughly equivalent.

I wondered the other day if my ratings were too high on the ACC, and if that may be contributing to my unusual stance on Duke (best team ever). There is unfortunately not a great way to determine this -- particularly since Duke's first round game is not yet lined -- but here's the difference between the lines my ratings projected and the current Pinnacle numbers, averaged across each conference.

The sample size is unacceptably low on these, and they'd definitely need to be regressed. So don't take this to mean that I'm 1.6 points too high on the ACC, but it's likely that I'm overrating the conference at least some. The big misses here were Florida St. (had them -3.9 vs. Gonzaga, it's -1), and Georgia Tech (had -1.4 against Oklahoma St., it's +1.5), but I was about a point optimistic on Wake, Clemson, and Maryland as well. We'll have to see how these five lines move, and what the Duke spread is released at on Wednesday.

Underrating the SEC was not something I had predicted my numbers are doing, but it appears that may be happening as well. I sold Kentucky, Tennessee, and Vanderbilt short by 2-3 points each in their first round matchups. This isn't really that surprising -- KenPom has the SEC as the fifth best conference, but far behind the other four, which isn't an opinion that you'll find too many places. So that's something to watch for as well.

Evaluating the Draw (2010)

Here's my attempt of quantifying which teams got good and bad draws, similar to what I did last year. I ran each team through my spreadsheet from their seed line in each of the four regions -- for example I put KU in their actual spot, but also in place of Syracuse, Duke, and Kentucky -- and saw how often they reached the rounds of 32, 16, 8, and four, on average. I then compared their chances from their actual draw to their chances from that neutral draw. A higher number means you have an easier path. First, the #1 seeds:

This meshes with what most people have been saying. Kansas' reward for earning the #1 overall seed was a very tough draw, with unusually difficult potential opponents in the Sweet 16 (Maryland) and Elite 8 (Ohio St./Georgetown). That's a far better fate than Kentucky's though, as the Wildcats may have to go through the best 16 (ETSU), 8 (Texas), 4 (Wisconsin), and 2 (West Virginia). That's an incredibly difficult stretch; I currently only have UK as about 1 in 5 to reach Indianapolis.

Two seeds:

My initial reaction was correct here, as Ohio St. is right in the middle of a killer region. The first two rounds aren't terrible, but potentially having to face Georgetown instead of New Mexico/Baylor/Pitt, and then Kansas rather than Duke/Syracuse/Kentucky, is very rough. As the #2 seed in the West, I'd have the Buckeyes at about 26% to reach the F4, but from their current spot it's just 19%.

On the other end of the spectrum we have Kansas St., and these ratings don't even take Onuaku's injury into account. The first three round are reasonable enough for the Wildcats, but then they have Syracuse/Vandy if they reach the regional final; that's a lot more appealing than Kansas/Maryland, Kentucky/Wisconsin, or even Duke/Purdue/Texas A&M.

Three seeds:

Pitt lucked out with their first round game, drawing previously discussed Oakland. The Panthers are currently favored by 10 in that game; their line would be a couple points shorter if they'd been paired with any of the other 14s. The Panthers then have an average outlook in the second and third rounds, but their number shoots up in the final column of the table above because of the aforementioned Syracuse/Vanderbilt regional final combo.

Georgetown got unlucky for essentially the same reasons as Ohio St., having a very tough Sweet 16 matchup and then probably having to play the best team in the country in order to reach the Final Four.

Four seeds:

Wisconsin, a tough draw in itself, gets to play the worst 13 seed (Wofford), and then UK rather one of the top seeds that I have rated very highly (KU, Duke). Maryland did reasonably well with their first round matchup (Houston), but after that it gets comical, with a potential path of Michigan St., Kansas, Ohio St.

We could go through this all night, but I'm going to lump the 5-16 seeds together. Here are the easiest draws from those teams:

It's strange to say that a #13 seed has a great draw, since they're likely going to lose in the first round even so, but it could be a lot worse for Murray St. They kick things off with Vanderbilt rather than Wisconsin, Maryland, or Purdue, and if they manage to make the Sweet 16 (not that crazy) would get the weakest #1 in Syracuse.

It'd probably be tough to convince Vermont that they have a great draw, since most brackets had them as a 15-seed this afternoon, but once you accept their #16 fate it could've been a lot worse. They're in Murray St.'s region, so they have the same path except backwards, starting with Syracuse and then potentially (it's possible!) facing Butler/Vandy in the Sweet 16. Florida St. and UTEP are also in the top half of the West region; that's the place to be for squads that will be wearing their road jerseys this weekend.

Toughest draws:

Here we have four of the five lowest seeds in the ridiculous Midwest region. It's not supposed to be easy for a #12 to reach the Final Four, but it's not usually Michigan St., Maryland, Kansas, Ohio St. either.

The numbers for all teams can be found here.

2010 Selection Sunday Live Chat

Reminder: Final entries for the Guessing the Seeds contest are due at 6pm EST on Sunday.

"In the Field" post is below. Chat starts at noon EST. Same rules as yesterday.

Four games today:

1:00pm EST, SEC: Mississippi St. (+7.5) vs. Kentucky
1:00pm EST, A-10: Richmond (+4) vs. Temple
1:00pm EST, ACC: Georgia Tech (+9) vs. Duke
3:30pm EST, Big Ten: Minnesota (+3.5) vs. Ohio St.