March Madness Betting Preview 2008

When making their NCAAB Odds for 2008, who have the odds makers highlighted as strong challengers to Florida’s crown?

The NCAA Basketball Tournament is the single biggest sports betting festival in America. The country shuts down, fills out its brackets, places its bets and settles back with a beer to watch the ballers. It’s a tournament that always springs its own surprises, but this year it’s hard to think of a time when it was harder to pick the number one seeds, let alone an eventual winner.

Last year it was a question of who’d stop the Gators (nobody, turned out to be the answer there). This year, Florida is on the bubble and might even be NIT bound. Every team among the contenders has its Achilles’ heel, and that’s what’s making handicapping the Tourney so fascinating – and potentially lucrative.

UCLA is the first team that you have to take into consideration. The Bruins have been to the past two Final Fours, and got to the Final itself in 2006, so they can’t have been far away then. Has the arrival of Kevin Love tipped UCLA over the line? Or will the seniors graduate knowing all too well that of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: it might have been?

Kansas has been on the radar for some time, but the rise of Texas is currently generating shockwaves in the Big 12. Nobody was expecting much in Austin this year after Kevin Durant went to the pros, but Texas is now more of a team than a one-man band, and is therefore better equipped for a Tournament run. Unless the Red Raiders hook the horns in the Big 12 Tourney of course. That could happen.

The ACC is still about North Carolina and Duke. Some poor results have left questions hanging about the Blue Devils while the Tar Heels’ chances seem to depend a lot on sophomore point guard Ty Lawson. North Carolina is a different team when Lawson pulls the strings.

No mid-major conference has had a team cut down the nets after a Championship game – Memphis was the last undefeated team in the nation, but the Tigers’ loss to Tennessee stung them badly. Can Memphis get back its mojo before the tourney, or will it find out the hard way that it’s not just enough to peak, you have to peak at the right time?

If you feel the need for a longshot, maybe a Cinderella with an experienced head coach might be the way to go. There might be a few of them down the Big East way. But it going to a wild and wide-open tournament and if you do manage to pick the winner, you will almost certainly get a good price on it. Best of luck.