March Madness is in Full Swing
There is a popular misuse of the term March Madness that has developed in our culture in recent years. People nowadays are usually using it to refer to the NCAA tournament itself. This is an incorrect application of the term. It’s correct usage is in referring to college basketball in the month of March, in particular the conference tournaments and figuring out what teams must do in order to make the NCAA tournament.
It can get confusing, and this is where the madness part comes in. After the field of 64 is set it gets pretty easy to figure out. Then there is the booby-prize NIT tournament, which can contribute to the confusion for non-sports fans taking a passing interest.
Right now is where the action is folks. As we speak the conference tournaments are being played and this weekend figures to see some great final games. Unfortunately the conference tournament champion contracts at Tradesports are not a hugely liquid market. That’s OK - you can get in there with bids on the teams you like or play market maker yourself. And of course the contracts on the individual games all have official market makers with deep numbers on both sides of a 5-point bid and ask spread.
Looking at the conference champion markets I see a few teams getting pretty good value. In the Pac 10 both Stanford and Washington State can be gotten for about 15. Since they have both already beaten UCLA, taking them both looks pretty good. In the Big 12 picking up Texas at about 25 looks like a decent proposition. In the Big 10 you can get both Indiana and Michigan State around 15 each, and in the ACC I like selling North Carolina at 48 as a way of betting on Duke (or some crazy longshot) to take them out.
Technorati Tags: March madness, Ncaa basketball, College basketball, Sports betting
