Posted on 2/28/2008 2:16:23 PM

College Basketball Picks - Three Best Values for March Madness

By BetUS Staff

The March Madness futures are up on the NCAAB betting board, and the top four favorites are the same four teams that have been trumpeted high and low to grab the No. 1 seeds at this year’s men’s college basketball Tournament. UCLA, North Carolina and Memphis are each pegged at +500 to win the championship; Kansas is very close behind at +550.

That’s far too crowded a marketplace. The general rule of thumb when betting futures is to take a risk on an undervalued longer shot. One exception is when the favorite becomes so dominant (think Tiger Woods) that you just keep pounding the chalk. No one team has been able to dominate the pack this season.

If you want to get some value out of your futures bet, you have to look in the bargain bin. Remember when Georgetown (+1500) and Louisville (+1800) were considered viable Final Four candidates? They still have the talent to get there. The Cardinals look like the better bet after beating the Hoyas 59-51 earlier this month – the highlight of their current seven-game winning streak both straight up and against the spread.

You can also take the “green bananas” approach and pick a young team that you expect to mature in time for the big dance. To make this work from a value perspective, the betting public has to decide the team is simply too green to wager on. That team would be Texas at +1500. The Longhorns are on an 8-0 SU and 7-0 ATS streak, beating Kansas at home and Kansas State on the road. Clearly this team is more than just the other four kids that got to play with Kevin Durant last year.

So why the low price? The betting public looks at the Longhorns and still sees “those other four kids” instead of D.J. Augustin (19.3 points, 5.9 assists per game) or Damion James (12.9 points, 10.5 rebounds). Durant cast a very tall shadow over these players last year; the media and the public focused their attention on the NBA-bound prodigy and failed to give Durant’s teammates their due. It will take a while for that mistake to be fully corrected and reflected on the NCAAB odds list, – but not much longer if the ‘Horns keep hookin’ em at this rate.

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