Tournament Trends and Sweet 16 Bets

We are one weekend into the NCAA tournament and, as predicted, the madness wasn’t particularly mad!

That said, there have been, and continue to be, some solid betting opportunities.

Today, I’ll dive right into some tourney trends, share an update on my progress in Juice Reel’s best bettor bracket (hint: I’m still alive), and tease a livestream I’m planning via their new feature next week.

As always, we’ll close with this week’s college basketball Bets of the Week!

Let’s get after it.

Sweet 16 Trends

So far, as expected, this tournament has mostly seen the obvious teams acting obvious.

Through the Round of 64 and 32, favorites went 39-9 outright and 29-19 against the spread (ATS), and favorites of 6 points or more points went 27-4 straight up.

This is the fewest underdog upsets in the last eight years, which seems to validate the gap in team strength between the top 20 teams and the rest.

In addition to the favored teams overperforming:

• The Big Ten keeps covering. The conference is 11-5 ATS in this tournament, and over the last three NCAA Tournaments it’s 34-19 ATS, including 27-9 ATS as favorites. That’s a meaningful sample size implying comparative strength that isn’t showing up in line-setting metrics for the eighteen-team “Big Ten”.

• Underdog Angles Exist. John Calipari is 9-3-1 ATS as an NCAA Tournament underdog and 7-1 ATS when catching 4+ points in the dance. More broadly, second-weekend dogs on a 6+ game win streak are 41-16-2 ATS since 2005, including 23-5-2 ATS since 2015. I’m reluctant to factor UMass 1996 (led by Calipari) into a 2026 bet, but the “second-weekend dog” trend is more interesting and applies to St. John’s in addition to Calipari’s Arkansas.

What do we do with this information?

I’ll quote my first manager (I was a trader) who yelled at me: “Don’t try to time the market! It’s too hard.”

In this context, I recommend you maintain a bias toward favorites over-performing, and orient toward Big Ten teams (six of which remain!). Don’t pivot until the trend shifts!

The Reel National Championship Update

Last week I set a goal of reaching Juice Reel’s best bettor bracket Sweet 16.

Mission accomplished.

I dominated my first round matchup vs. (absentee) RGA216.

I won almost $2,000 those two days, including some big wins on Bet365’s early win promotion (Hofstra got up 10 and I hit a +500!).

I had more competition in the Round of 32, but took down arbitrage bettor taco97.

MSU + Duke + High Point cover did the trick.

This week I’m up against “NeverPassSports”, who seems more active than good. Haha.

If I win, however, I’ll likely go head to head with Matt, aka sXeBets - the #1 seed and top ranked bettor on Juice Reel!

Wish me luck, hopefully we’ll talk Reel Final Four next week.

Upcoming Livestream

Juice Reel recently introduced the ability to livestream and interact with audience questions within the app.

Next week, I’m planning to 1) open up a free trial for new subscribers, and 2) run a livestream.

My planned agenda is:

• Overview of how I trade prediction markets with a focus on limit orders.

• Ways to use AI to find potential betting angles.

• Live Q&A from attendees

Look out for details next week, now on to the bets!

Bet(s) of the Week $$

Last week was disappointing.

Despite personally having a very profitable few days of tournament betting, we lost both games in this section: BYU and UNI.

Since starting the newsletter, however, bets in this section are ahead 22.16 units, with a positive 14.5% ROI. We’ll update this regularly.

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

• Purdue -7.5 @ -120 on FanDuel for 0.5 units (Tonight)

In addition for fitting our “favorites” and “Big Ten” trends above, Texas is a bad matchup victim against Purdue’s hedge defense and offense. Despite playing at a slower pace (which could aid in staying close), I expect Purdue to be in control and cover this spread via solid free-throw shooting down the stretch.

• Arizona -8 @ -110 on Caesars for 0.5 units (Tonight)

The reason to lay the points with Arizona is Arkansas’ consistent inability to defend the rim, control runs, or match Arizona’s foul pressure and physicality. Barring a Calipari-driven miracle generating buy-in on defense, this high-scoring game should end with Wildcat starters on the bench.

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