NCAA Tournament Bracket Predictions: Southeast Region
by Robert Ferringo - 3/15/2011

If this were the World Cup then the Southeast Region would be considered the Group of Death. The 2010 runner-up is the No. 8 seed (Butler). The best scorer in the country is with the No. 3 seed (BYU). Two programs with a combined nine Final Four appearances in the last 12 years are playing one another (Michigan State vs. UCLA) as the No. 7 and No. 10 seeds.

March Madness Bracket Predictions: East Region
by Robert Ferringo - 3/15/2011

The East (Newark) Region of the NCAA Tournament features four of the top 10 most heavily favored teams to win the national title. Top seeded Ohio State presently has the third-best odds to win the title (+465) while Kentucky (+1615), North Carolina (+2050) and Syracuse (+2550) are all among the Top 10 teams deemed most likely to win it all.

March Madness Brackets Advice and Tips: Over-Seeded and Under-Seeded Teams
by T.O. Whenham - 3/15/2011

Creating the March Madness bracket every year is a brutally hard job, and I fully realize and respect how it would be totally impossible to make everyone happy. Still, that respect doesn’t mean I have to like or agree with everything they do. This year in particular there seems to be a particularly high number of head-scratchers. That’s what you get when you put a guy from Ohio State in charge of anything, I guess. Here’s a look at the most over-seeded and under-seeded teams in the bracket in my eyes with some March Madness brackets advice and tips to help you avoid common mistakes that the rest of your competition will likely make:

NCAA Tournament Predictions: Potential Early Upsets
by Darin Zank - 3/15/2011

When it comes to handicapping the opening round of the NCAA Tournament, whether it's to wager on individual games or fill out a bracket, the logic boils down to this; the top seeds are going to win most of the games, but there will be a handful of upsets. The trick is to pick those upsets in advance. Because what good is an upset if you can't take advantage of it?

NCAA Tournament Brackets Strategy: Potential Trap Games
by T.O. Whenham - 3/15/2011

Every year in the tournament there are the teams that the public really likes -- the high profile, usually highly seeded teams full of future NBA stars that the media has been talking about as a potential champion. When the public locks on to one of those teams they are usually very enthusiastic in their support. They don’t bother to look too deeply at what challenges face them in the bracket on the way to the Promised Land. They just blindly and loyally back them.

Potential NCAA Tournament Cinderella Teams
by Alan Matthews - 3/15/2011

Already here at Doc’s we previewed the No. 5 vs. No. 12 second-round matchups (it still feels weird saying second round but that’s what the NCAA calls the former first round now that there is a “First Four” on Tuesday and Wednesday). So for this story on potential Cinderella teams for the NCAA Tournament, I will forgo any No. 12 seeds, although there are two very good potential Cinderellas in that group (Utah State and Richmond).

March Madness Predictions and Betting Advice
by T.O. Whenham - 3/15/2011

The tournament is finally here. After months of watching basketball constantly, weeks of watching the bubble like a hawk, days of conference tournament addiction, and now countless hours of studying the bracket, I am ready to make five bold March Madness predictions about what is going to happen starting Thursday. They may not really be that bold, but they aren’t totally safe, either:

March Madness Brackets Strategy: Reseeding the Brackets
by Nicholas Tolomeo - 3/15/2011

The NCAA Selection Committee does not have the luxury of seeding every team like it deserves to be seeded. The four best teams are usually the No. 1 seeds. The worst four teams are playing in the play-in games. But in between that the selection committee has to juggle teams to avoid regular-season rematches and potential conference showdowns in the second round all while taking major consideration to the location of the game. What this means is that rarely are teams assigned their true seed.

NCAA Tournament Brackets Strategy: The No. 5 vs. No. 12 Seed Upsets
by Alan Matthews - 3/15/2011

Overall, the No. 5 seed is 69-35 against the No. 12 seed since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985. So nearly 67 percent of the time the No. 5 comes out victorious. But being that there are four 5-12 games, that generally does mean you see one No. 12 over a No. 5 first-round upset. It happened last year, for example, with Cornell beating Temple. By comparison, a No. 4 seed is 82-22 since 1985 against a No. 13 seed and a No. 6 is 71-33 against a No. 11.

NCAA Tournament Handicapping: The Biggest Challenges
by Aaron Smith - 3/15/2011

This is one of the most exciting weeks of the year for sports fans and bettors. March Madness captures the attention of nearly everyone with its trademark tremendous finishes. There’s no doubt this year’s tournament will be another exciting one. If there is a negative to March Madness for the average sports bettor, it clearly is the amazing amount of challenges that come with handicapping the NCAA Tournament. College basketball handicapping during the tournament is far different than during the regular season. Let’s take a closer look at some of the challenges that are specific to the NCAA Tournament.

NCAA Tournament Predictions: Potential Sweet Sixteen Surprises
by T.O. Whenham - 3/15/2011

The NCAA Tournament is as brilliant as it is because of many things, but upsets would be chief among them. There are few things I like more in sports than seeing the dust settle after the opening weekend and seeing some incredibly unlikely teams still alive when 48 other teams (or 52 thanks to this stupid new format) are already on their way home with their tails between their legs. What makes these upsets so exciting is that they aren’t always easy to spot. Here are six spots, though, that seem to have at least a decent chance of producing a pleasing shocker according to my NCAA Tournament predictions:

NCAA Tournament Facts and Interesting Tidbits
by T.O. Whenham - 3/14/2011

The term March Madness has only been associated with the NCAA Tournament since the early 1980’s -- perhaps thanks to usage by Brent Musberger. It’s been around referring to college basketball a lot longer than that, though. High school basketball tournaments in Midwestern states like Indiana and Illinois have been using the term since the 1930s.

NCAA Tournament Betting Trends
by T.O. Whenham - 3/14/2011

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting antsy. The field is set, I’ve stared at the bracket until I can’t see anymore, and now I just want the games to start -- and I’m not talking about those stupid games in Dayton. The next three weeks -- and especially the first four days of the NCAA Tournament -- are like Christmas for sports bettors. To help pass the time until the games start, and to hopefully make the March Madness betting experience more fun and profitable, here’s a look at NCAA Tournament betting trends from three different perspectives:

NCAA Tournament Bracket Tips and Advice
by T.O. Whenham - 3/14/2011

For a lot of people the NCAA Tournament is all about one thing -- winning your tournament pool. If you want to have a good chance of winning your bracket you need to be lucky, but you also need to make sure that you are making good decisions to give yourself the best chance of success. In a lot of pools there are many people who really have no idea how to fill out a bracket properly, so you have a big edge over most of those people just by thinking about what you are doing as you do it. Here are some NCAA Tournament bracket tips and advice to help you find the right path:

NCAA Tournament Odds and Predictions
by T.O. Whenham - 3/14/2011

Looking at the NCAA Tournament odds just minutes after they came out there are a few games that really stand out as surprising or interesting. Here are 10 games that are the most interesting at first glance (NCAA Tournament odds for these games and all others are available from Bookmaker):

March Madness Brackets Advice and Tips
by T.O. Whenham - 3/14/2011

It’s almost time for March Madness to tip off. That means that it is time to fill out your bracket - hopefully your winning bracket. Here is some March Madness bracket advice and tips to help you with your March Madness brackets strategy:

How to Run a March Madness Brackets Pool
by Alan Matthews - 3/14/2011

It’s mid-March, so that means words like “bracketology” and “office pool” will become prevalent around your workplace. It’s also a time most employers dread because there will be very little work done next Thursday and Friday in the opening rounds of the NCAA Tournament. Well, technically the opening round is on Tuesday now with the “First Four” – four opening-round games with those winners then advancing to the second round. But in reality the First Four is just four play-in games instead of the usual one we had when the tourney was at 65.

NCAA Tournament Predictions: Teams That Are Hard to Assess
by T.O. Whenham - 3/10/2011

There are some teams that are really easy to figure out heading into the NCAA Tournament -- they are either very strong teams that have the chance to go a long, long way, or they are badly outclassed teams that don’t need to book their hotel rooms for long. These five teams unfortunately fit into neither group. These are the ‘tweeners’ -- teams that have the potential to go really deep if everything goes their way, but which have enough questions surrounding them to make their success far from a certainty. In short, these five teams make my head hurt, and they are going to make my head hurt until the last possible second I have to fill out my bracket -- and perhaps long after that.

SEC Tournament Predictions and College Basketball Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 3/9/2011

Watching SEC basketball is a lot like watching a WWE Royal Rumble. (Which makes sense, since hillbilly southerners are the primary purveyors of both.) In both the SEC and the Royal Rumble there is biting, clawing, chaos, out-of-control athletes, no real organization, and in the end the winner is usually either one of the obvious choices (Hulk Hogan in the RR, Kentucky in the SEC) or one shrouded in controversy and coming out of nowhere (Mississippi State in 2009 and Georgia in 2008; Vince McMahon in 1999).

College Basketball National Championship Free Picks - Duke-Butler Predictions
by Alan Matthews - 4/5/2010

I don’t know about you, but I believe today is the best sports day of the year because you have baseball’s Opening Day to go along with the end of college basketball’s season. Shoot, this year we’ve even got Tiger Woods facing the full media for the first time. The TV will be on all day!