NCAA Tournament Thread

[cardsfansince82]

80-1 when they were already in the Sweet 16? That's too good of a line for a lot of degens to pass up. Hell, I probably would have dropped a hundred on them.

It sounds outrageous, but 80-1 is still a bad bet. I wouldn't have put more than $5 or $10 on it at the time. Hind sight helps. At the start of the Sweet 16 they had to beat Florida State as an underdog, with FSU coming off a dominant win against Notre Dame. Then go through Kansas. They were a 7-1 underdog in that game alone. Then beat the winner of FLA/BYU/WIS/BUT as an underdog. Then beat anyone from Ohio State/Duke/UNC/etc. from the other side in the championship. The bracket worked out as well as VCU could have hoped and you can still buy them at 7-1 to win the title.

[MrSaigon]

Two of over five million ESPN brackets got the Final Four right.

[longhornbaseball]

80-1 when they were already in the Sweet 16? That's too good of a line for a lot of degens to pass up. Hell, I probably would have dropped a hundred on them.

It sounds outrageous, but 80-1 is still a bad bet. I wouldn't have put more than $5 or $10 on it at the time. Hind sight helps. At the start of the Sweet 16 they had to beat Florida State as an underdog, with FSU coming off a dominant win against Notre Dame. Then go through Kansas. They were a 7-1 underdog in that game alone. Then beat the winner of FLA/BYU/WIS/BUT as an underdog. Then beat anyone from Ohio State/Duke/UNC/etc. from the other side in the championship. The bracket worked out as well as VCU could have hoped and you can still buy them at 7-1 to win the title.

For 80-1 to yield a positive expectation you would have had to think VCU's chances to win the tournament (i.e. win four games in a row) was greater than 1/81 = 1.23%. To win four games in a row more often than 1.23% of the time, their average expected winning percentage for each of the games needed to be greater than 0.0123^(1/4) = 33.3%. So, in order for 80-1 to be a good bet you need to think VCU's average expectation for each of the remaining games is better than 2-1, not a good bet like you said. This just illustrates how hard it is to make consistent money betting on sports.

[InvincibleCakeEater]

Not a good bet at all, but too good of a line to pass up at that stage of the tournament IMO. Especially with something as volatile as NCAA BB.

[stlouie_lipp]

I guess I'm not really sure where to post this...this seems as good a place as any to reach the basketball fans on here.

I thought this was a good read.

http://www.slate.com/id/2289100/

[Radbird]

Great game so far. Wish that VCU and Butler were playing each other Monday night.

[greenback44]

Clank, clank, clank. That was tough to watch.

[thrill]

Clank, clank, clank. That was tough to watch.

Yeah that was ugly.

But hey! UConn just paid for my car repairs! In the season where I watch zero college basketball, I won my pool. Of course that's how it works.

[mikechamp]

Not sure how this thread went stale for 15 years, but I'm bringing it back!

This video (found at the link below) was not broadcast on CBS, and I don't think it's an AI video. Not sure what in the world Coach Hurley is doing here, nor why he wasn't reprimanded for it. Very bizarre:

Did Dan Hurley deserve a technical after game-winning shot for going face-to-face with ref?

UConn coach Dan Hurley is known for his high-energy antics on the sideline. That unsurprisingly didn't change after true freshman Braylon Mullins buried a game-winning 3-pointer with 0.4 seconds left in the Huskies' 73-72 win over top-seeded Duke in the Elite Eight.

Hurley, a two-time national champion at UConn, came face-to-face with the referee after Mullins' shot, despite there still being 0.4 seconds left on the clock. He wasn't given a technical foul despite coming in contact with the referee, resulting in UConn moving onto the Final Four.

https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/did-d ... 50356.html

[obucard]

Honestly, the video looks like the ref bumped into Hurley (who made no effort to avoid contact). Duke may have had a point, but their reputation as a team that gets the calls (they have 2 games this tournament where they shot three times as many free throws as their opponent yet still only won by 5-6 points) means that only Duke fans and UConn haters are salty about that one. Everyone else thinks it's karmic retribution.