GatewayRedbirds.com

InvincibleCakeEater wrote: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.

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

cardsfansince82 wrote:

InvincibleCakeEater wrote: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.

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.

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/

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

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

greenback44 wrote: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.

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

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.