Conference Tourney Odds Recap

Throughout the conference tournament previews, I mentioned how terrible the odds for the longshots were. If any of those teams made a run, you could make a lot more money betting on the money lines in each individual game than you would if you bet on the futures odds at the beginning of the tournament. Conversely, there seemed to be significantly more value in the the odds for the top three or so teams in each tournament.

Over the last few days, I tracked the money lines for each conference tournament game. Using this information, we can determine the "true odds" for each team that reached their conference tournament final- that is, the odds you could've gotten if you bet on their money line each game, rolling the winnings over to the next game. The table below shows these "true odds" for each team, and compares them to the best odds you could've gotten on that team at the beginning of the tourney.

Georgia's run was quite improbable. If you had bet $10 on them to beat Mississippi at +175 in round 1, and rolled that money over all the way to betting on them at +310 to beat Arkansas this afternoon, you would've turned that $10 into $1,725.10. A little better than ending up with $510 if you'd bet on them at 50:1, I'd say. The fact that they had to play three games in two days factors into this discrepancy somewhat, but it's also true that they didn't even have to play the conference's beat team, Tennessee.

The same is true for Pitt; their game-by-game odds were almost twice as good as the pre-tournament 12:1 odds. And there is no disclaimer here- they had the insane task of having to beat Louisville, Marquette, and Georgetown on three consecutive days. At least they were rewarded by being placed in the same pod as Michigan St.

The Illinois lines look strange, since their pre-tournament odds were actually better. This can be explained pretty simply- they ended up being favored in the semifinals, since they played Minnesota after the Golden Gophers upset Indiana. If the Illini had faced the Hoosiers in the semis, that +1888 would've become +2891.

Each of the other teams to reach the final were in the top 3 in their conference. UNC's "true" odds probably would've been closer to EV had they faced Duke in the finals.

As expected, Wisconsin at +200 was excellent. They did benefit slightly from facing Illinois in the final, but they would've been significant favorites against any opponent.