Big Time Conference Tourneys

Quick hitter newsletter coming today before a bigger March Madness look next week.

Last week we covered the early mid-major conference tournaments, and if you listened to my value picks, you’re in a profitable spot thanks to the McNeese Cowboys taking down the Southland Conference.

This week we’ll pivot to higher profile teams (!!). I’ll share a couple trends that are skewing into my betting decisions, one resource I think is worth the money, and a couple additional value tournament futures I think I worth a look.

As always, we’ll keep firing and close with this week’s Bets of the Week!

Let’s get after it.

Trends On My Mind

Last year we covered the advantage to betting favored teams in power conferences coming off a bye.

At that point, power conference favorites were 312-106 straight up and 219-191 against the spread (53.4%) when facing teams that have already played in the tournament. Positive return on a huge sample.

A couple weeks ago, we talked about the unique gap in strength in the top 2026 teams vs the pack.

No field on record has ever had a larger gaps from the Top-5/Top-10/Top-25 to the 51-100 band in college basketball.

The combination of those two trends has me looking to bet favored top 25 teams with byes facing lesser competition in major conferences.

I’ve done this successfully with Iowa State yesterday (49 point win over Arizona State), and St. John’s today (cover against Providence).

I think adding that bias to your betting will serve you well this week.

My Favorite March Madness Resource

Nate Silver has always had excellent tournament handicapping resources to use for filling out brackets or betting futures.

He recently introduced his new COOPER rating system to comparatively rank teams, and this system can be used to model outcomes for individual games (and bet!).

The initial article is partially behind his paywall, but I've been a subscriber for years and highly recommend it if it’s in your price range (at least for the next month!).

Values I Like

After a profitable set of suggestions last week, I’ll try this again:

1) St. John’s to win the Big East (+200) - This is as much a bet against UConn’s recent turmoil as it is on Coach Pitino’s crew, but St. John’s has recently shown the form that got them a preseason #5 AP ranking, and I see a lot of value on them following a straightforward path to Saturday’s final at MSG.

2) Yale to win the Ivy (+120) - The Ivy does a terrible job protecting their best teams, as Yale will start this tournament playing a road game against a live Cornell team. That said, they’re 80 spots clear of the rest of the field in KenPom rankings and I expect them to avenge a recent loss to Cornell in their stiffest test.

Bet(s) of the Week $$

Last week we went 1-1. The winner was prettier than the loser.

Portland delivered as expected. The Pilots won 77-68, the three-point variance normalized (Pepperdine shot nowhere near their 16-of-28 outlier from the regular season meeting), and Portland dominated at the rim again. Easy cover.

Navy was disappointing. The Midshipmen won 74-69, but were not close to covering 14.5. Bucknell led by eight in the second half, Navy rallied with a 15-0 run to flip it, and then held on.

We lost a small amount of vig, but since starting the newsletter, bets in this section are ahead 23.96 units, with a +15.9% ROI.

A $100 bettor would be up $2,396 if they tailed every bet. We'll keep tallying weekly.

Based on my research, I am making the following bets this week:

• Texas A&M Money Line @ -120 on FanDuel for 0.5 units (Tonight)

The Aggies bother Oklahoma with their zone press (forced a 24% turnover rate in first meeting), and have the advantage of coming off a bye tonight. I like them to advance.

Please fill out the survey about today’s newsletter and let me know your thoughts!