While every Division I college basketball team would love to win the NCAA title, just reaching the Final Four is an amazing accomplishment in itself. Here, the last four remaining NCAA Tournament teams battle it out to see who’ll make it to the championship game. The action is intense and high profile, the latter of which draws millions of bettors. Because of this, people will find lots of Final Four betting opportunities in early April. That said, let’s take a closer look at the basics of wagering on the Final Four, including different types of bets and strategy.
Betting guide
Once March Madness gets down to just four teams (and three remaining games), fewer and fewer opportunities for advantage gambling exist. It just plain gets harder to find a soft line when there are so few to handicap. The whole market tightens up and the books and the general public all start to agree – it’s a bit of a freaky social phenomenon when viewed from a sports bettor’s perspective.
That said, it is possible to find a favorable line if you have the patience and the ability to shop at a variety of sportsbooks immediately after the lines appear, when variance is most likely to exist.
But don’t focus on line shopping instead of handicapping. Doing research and looking at stats is just as important in these final games as in any other sports betting contest. With the March Madness Final Four, you want to look mostly at how teams performed on the road (since the remaining contests will all essentially be “road games”), the difference in their total number of rebounds on both sides of the ball, opponent’s FG% numbers, and performance against any recent common opponents.
What about intangibles? The “momentum” we talked about earlier is no doubt still at work in the later rounds, but it’s less likely than in earlier rounds to involve a deep-seeded team. Some handicappers become armchair philosophers at Final Four time, analyzing team chemistry, body language, and attitude to see what direction those intangibles indicate the teams are headed in. This is all well and good, but it’s no substitute for proper handicapping and line shopping.
It’s also important to understand trends at this level of collegiate play. By the time you get to the Final Four, the higher-seeded team wins (and usually covers the spread) at least 75% of the time. This is especially true for the modern Tournament. This, combined with the fact that so much more of the action that happens during the final three Championship games of the tournament is from amateurs and sharps, scares away some serious sports bettors, even pros.
Whether you choose to wager on the final three games of the NCAA’s biggest basketball event, it’s quite a spectacle.
Betting strategy
One of the most important things that any bettor can do in the earlier rounds of the NCAA Tournament is shop for soft lines. But when the Final Four rolls around, everything tightens up considerably. With only two games left in the tournament, most sportsbooks are very good at setting lines that reflect how the public will bet. Even still, you can occasionally jump on a favorable line at certain sportsbooks right after they’re released.
You’ll probably gain much more of an advantage by studying the actual Final Four games, though. Remember, you’re essentially betting against the public. So if you can understand the stats and players better than others, you have more of a chance to win your bet. Some of the main things that you want to research with Final Four betting include looking at how teams have performed on the road, rebounding margin, defensive field goal percentage, common opponents and momentum.
The latter is really important because you want to know how teams are gelling and what their chemistry is like heading into the Final Four. Of course, everybody has won four games to get to this point so they’re all doing really well. However, some teams are going to be playing better than others. You might want to check out what handicappers have to say about the matchups too just to get a different perspective on everything.
There are plenty of other aspects that you can research when betting on the Final Four as well. The more time you put into the matter, the more likely you are to be successful with your bets.
