Tag: BetFTW

March Madness 2023: Best bets (VCU!) in the West Region

Kansas isn’t the only good bet in this region.

The West Region of the men’s NCAA tournament bracket is incredibly strong on each opposite end.

Between 1-seed Kansas and 2-seed UCLA, it’ll be hard to resist going chalk up to the regional final.

But while the other teams in this region may be a step below the top seeds, they’re mostly all in the same relative ballpark as each other. I sorted through the madness to find some good bets throughout the region.

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March Madness bracket prediction: Can Iowa win the women’s NCAA tournament?

Can Caitlin Clark provide the recipe for beating South Carolina?

It’s mid-March, which means it’s time to break out the sharpies, fill out some brackets, and maybe even make some bets.

Some of us watch a ton of college basketball all season long and have a pretty good feel for how the tournament might play out. Others cram in 20 minutes worth of research fill in our picks off that. And then some of us pick winners based on who has the best mascot.

I suppose folks would classify me in that first category: I’m an AP Top 25 voter for women’s college basketball and have been covering the sport all season long at For The Win and for a few other news organizations. Am I an expert? Probably not. Is my bracket wrong? Probably. But we’re going to have some fun and break it down anyways.

Here are my picks, and please forgive my sloppy handwriting and printer that is in-need of a tune-up.

Oh, and you can download and fill out your own bracket here.

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Mitchell Northam's 2023 women's basketball bracket prediction which is absolutely totally awesome and correct.
Mitchell Northam’s 2023 women’s basketball bracket prediction which is absolutely totally awesome and correct.

A few explanations:

  • I’m taking Creighton to advance to the Sweet 16 out of Notre Dame’s sub-regional because — despite no official word from the Irish — I don’t believe Olivia Miles will play in the NCAA Tournament, and if she does, I don’t think she’ll be 100 percent healthy. While on the bench at the ACC tournament, Miles didn’t look like someone who could jog, much less sprint while dribbling a basketball. I would love to see her play in the tournament, but I’ll be pretty surprised if she does. Even if Miles does play, Creighton shouldn’t be overlooked. The Bluejays are 11th in the nation in offensive rating (111.5), 12th in effective field goal percentage (52.8) and 10th in points per play (0.93).
  • For one of my big first-round upsets, I’m taking East Carolina over Texas. The Longhorns turn the ball over 15.2 times per game, which ranks a mediocre 144th in the nation. East Carolina is built on its defense this year, ranking third in points allowed per play (0.65), 11th in 3-point shooting defense (25.8 percent) and third in turnovers forced per game (24.2). The Pirates have what it takes to rattle Texas on its home floor.
  • In Duke’s sub-regional, I’m predicting total chaos. I don’t think my MTSU over Colorado pick will be uncommon. The Blue Raiders have a balanced attack, ranking in the top 20 nationally in both offensive and defensive rating. MTSU has also beaten two fellow tournament teams this season, including Louisville. The more farfetched upset prediction is Iona over host Duke. But here’s the thing: The Gaels can shoot the lights out of the basketball, ranking second in the nation in 3-point shooting (40.1 percent). Duke has a great defense, but the Blue Devils have struggled to overcome early deficits (see also: their last two games against Virginia Tech). If Iona connects early and often, it could make Duke’s tournament stay a short one.
  • N.C. State is a No. 7 seed, but I think the Wolfpack have the potential to advance to the Elite Eight if Diamond Johnson is healthy. Remember: This is an N.C. State team that beat Iowa in Ames earlier this season. The Wolfpack have also beaten tournament-bound teams in West Virginia, Georgia, South Florida, Miami, Louisville, Notre Dame and North Carolina. Wolfpack coach Wes Moore is a veteran of this tournament, having taken his teams to the Big Dance 15 times. While LSU is armed with a superstar in Angel Reese, the Tigers — with their 75th-ranked strength of schedule — never faced a team matching the caliber of N.C. State in non-conference play.
  • My Villanova to the Final Four pick is simply based on Maddy Siegrist catching fire. Indiana couldn’t stop Caitlin Clark. Can they contain the nation’s leading scorer at 28.9 points per game?

  • I think North Carolina is under-seeded at No. 6. A lot of folks thought the Tar Heels had the resume of a top-16 seed. Instead, Courtney Banghart’s side is off to Columbus, Ohio where they could cause a lot of problems for the Buckeyes in a potential second-round matchup.
  • Virginia Tech is one of the hottest teams in the country, having won 11 straight games. I think they’ll keep that rolling to the national championship game. No one in the ACC — which has the most teams in the tournament with eight — had an answer for the combination of Elizabeth Kitley and Georgia Amoore, and I’m skeptical that even mighty UConn will be able to stifle the duo.
  • Caitlin Clark looks like the most dynamic player in the country. She just powered her team to a Big Ten tournament championship and will likely be voted National Player of the Year. She’s averaging 27 points, 8.3 assists and 7.5 rebounds per game. She leads the nation in 3-pointers made, knocking down 3.4 per game. While South Carolina is undefeated this year, they haven’t faced a perimeter scorer with Clark’s skills. There’s no player in the SEC that really compares to Clark, the UConn team South Carolina beat didn’t have Azzi Fudd, the Maryland team that lost to the Gamecocks didn’t have Diamond Miller, and while UCLA and Stanford are great teams, they simply aren’t armed with the same threat that Clark presents. She could give South Carolina headaches.

March Madness 2023: Best bets (Michigan State!) in the East Region

Michigan State vs. USC should be one of the best first-round games.

The East Region of the men’s NCAA tournament bracket has some heavy-hitters that leave it wholly unpredictable.

We’re talking about 1-seed Purdue, No. 4 Tennessee, No. 5 Duke, No. 6 Kentucky and a few more squads that could make deep tournament runs.

There aren’t many locks when it comes to a region like this, but I sorted through the mess to find the best bets of the best.

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A March Madness men’s bracket prediction based on just 20 minutes of research

One of our writers picks his bracket based on 20 minutes of research.

Hi, my name is Charles Curtis and I am NOT a college basketball fan.

That is, until March. Then? Like the rest of you, I kick my feet up on my couch with my laptop and watch wall to wall hoops in the first week of men’s March Madness.

And, like you, I invest in filling out a bracket for a pool. Well, actually, it’s more like I fill out a dozen or so brackets for multiple pools. Have I won? I think I came in the top-five … twice in my life.

But here’s the thing that you already know: You don’t need to be a college hoops expert to win a bracket pool!

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So I did what I do every year and read some expert takes on Cinderellas, upset picks and top teams in trouble and filled out a bracket using (shameless plug) our For The Win printable bracket.

Some notes:

1. I heard Purdue has a really good big man in Zach Edey. But I do know that sometimes it’s the shooters who win tourney games at the line and beyond the arc. Hence why they lose at some point in the East.

2. Pardon the (Not TCU) pick, but I’m writing this before the play-in games. And I’m picking whoever wins the 11-seed game between Arizona State and Nevada, because one play-in team always wins again.

3. I love Shaka Smart. I would like to see Marquette go far. Biased? Maybe.

4. Is it chalky? Yes. But I have Drake winning twice for what it’s worth.

Good luck!

THE BRACKETS ARE BACK! The USA TODAY Sports Bracket Challenge is back! $1 MILLION grand prize for a perfect bracket, $25,000 prize for top bracket. Free to enter, 21+. Terms apply, void where prohibited by law. See Official Rules. Play now!

Stephen A. Smith thinks Vegas is wrong about Nikola Jokic as the NBA MVP favorite

Jokic is still the frontrunner, but Joel Embiid is closing the gap.

Nikola Jokic is the betting favorite to win his third-straight MVP award this season, with -200 odds at BetMGM. But if you ask ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, smart money is on the player with the next best odds.

“I know Vegas is saying something different. I don’t want to hear anything about Jokic being the frontrunner for the MVP right now, the way Denver has tailed off,” Smith said Monday on ESPN’s First Take. “Joel Embiid … that man has got to be right up there, if not No. 1.”

Indeed, Embiid’s odds to win the award have jumped to +225 from +650 last Tuesday, as Jokic’s odds have dropped from -400 in the same time.

Smith gives Embiid the edge due to a recent rough patch for the Denver Nuggets, who have lost three straight games, including two to teams with losing records.

However, even with the skid, Denver still holds first place in the Western Conference and has one more win than the Philadelphia 76ers. Jokic is also averaging 30 points, 14 rebounds and 10 assists during the losing streak.

Still, there’s no denying Embiid has closed whatever gap existed. During a five-game winning streak for the Sixers, he’s averaging 37 points, six rebounds, five assists, two blocks and a steal.

Embiid also leads the league in scoring at 33.4 points per game, while averaging 10 rebounds, 4.1 assists, 1.6 blocks and also being a defensive force in the paint. Jokic averages a triple-double at 24.7 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists.

There isn’t really a wrong choice here. But the MVP does seem to be boiling down to these two with less than a month left in the season.

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March Madness 2023: Best bets (Auburn!) in the Midwest Region

One Texas team will advance while Xavier struggles against the spread

The Midwest Region of the men’s NCAA bracket looks almost too top heavy.

No. 1 seed Houston was at the top of the polls all season. No. 2 Texas was in a fight for the Big 12 regular season title all year (winning the conference tournament), and the rest of the region is mostly teams who came on strong down the final stretch of games.

So, of course, we should expect the unexpected here.

Bracket-busters like Penn State, Texas A&M and Kent State are lurking.

So who should you bet on to escape Kansas City en route to the Final Four in Houston, Texas?

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We’ve got you covered.

March Madness 2023: Best bets (Utah State!) in the South Region

An upset brewing for Missouri and banking Baylor in the South Region.

The South Region of the men’s NCAA tournament bracket is an absolute gauntlet.

Aside from No. 1 overall seed Alabama, there’s No. 4 Virginia, No. 3 Baylor, No. 2 Arizona and No. 6 Creighton lurking and ready to fight their way to the Final Four.

So how do you make sense of who to bet on in such a stacked region? We’ve got you covered.

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Here are three of the best bets you can make on 16 teams who will have to go through Louisville if they want to make it to the national championship in Houston.

Q&A: Reggie Miller predicts the team most likely to choke during March Madness

Reggie Miller on remembering Craig Sager every March, the silliest bets he made with his Pacers teammates and why one Indiana team should be worried this month.

There are few truer signs that March has arrived than Reggie Miller popping up in a Wendy’s commercial.

For the fourth consecutive year, Miller is the face of the Wendy’s March Madness ads, and as he continues to film the spots there becomes more of an emphasis on the “madness” portion behind the scenes. Sure there’s a script, but it’s more of a rough guideline.

“I would say it’s 70-to-75 percent is ad-libbed,” Miller said. “We just came up with it right then and we did it.”

So yes, when you see the NBA icon correcting a server on how to approach him or dancing his way around the set during every media break this month, that’s all Reggie.

Not that it should be a surprise at this point. Few players in basketball history have embraced the spotlight like the Hall of Famer.

“I started with like, the MC Hammer. I did the Running Man. I did the windshield wiper is like it was just silly,” Miller said of his dance moves. “We were just doing crazy stuff. The dancing is good, but it’s the timing of the reactions of the actors [Chris Kleckner, Bill O’Neil, Kathryn Feeney and Willie Earl Jr.]. That’s what’s so brilliant about it. It’s never a dull moment when we’re on set.”

Much like his fictional self in the commercials, Miller plans on spending all of March glued to his TV watching the bracket play out. And because he isn’t calling any of the tournament games he’ll get to watch as many of them as he pleases.

Miller spoke to For The Win ahead of the tournament to dish on his Final Four picks, which team is getting bounced early, the dumbest bets he made with his Pacers teammates and why he rocks Craig Sager Air Force 1s during March.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

4 potential first-round upsets for the NCAA men’s tournament, including 1 in each region

Let’s put a few teams on upset alert.

The odds of getting a perfect bracket in the NCAA tournament are so long that it’s practically impossible to do.

One of the things that makes it so hard is predicting all of the inevitable upsets. We know they’re going to happen. Oddsmakers know it too — there will always be Cinderellas. We just don’t know which teams fit the glass slipper yet.

So, let me preface everything to follow by saying, I don’t know either. Now that that’s out the way, these are my best bets for a first-round upset in each region. Please note, if the spread wasn’t at least more than a single bucket, I didn’t consider the game for an upset, regardless of seeds.

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March Madness: 3 men’s first-round upsets oddsmakers expect

These spreads disagree with the selection committee’s seeding

While there are tons of complaints from fan bases across the country over how the NCAA selection committee seeded the 68 teams in the men’s basketball tournament, it appears oddsmakers don’t have too many gripes with how the matchups turned out.

As early betting gets underway for the first round of the tournament on Thursday and Friday, only three lower-seeded teams are considered favorites on the moneyline and against the spread — and even then the difference is pretty marginal.

That is, of course, unless you’re trying to fill out a perfect bracket this year or pick the right team to wager on. Then these lines become pretty significant.

Two of the teams expected to pull off upsets are No. 9 seeds facing a No. 8. The other is a No. 10 seed that should give a fits to a No. 7 seed.

Here’s a look at the opening lines via BetMGM.

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