NCAA College Basketball Free Picks

Well the long college basketball betting season is finally at an end as Butler battles Duke for the National Championship.  We’ll be turning our attention to baseball betting, along with the NHL and NBA playoffs in the coming weeks. We’ll also look to get involved with the back-from-the dead Arena Football league.  But for Monday, at least, the big sporting event both for bettors and fans alike is the NCAA basketball final.

In Saturday’s early game, Butler will play Michigan State and we’ve got your Final Four betting selection on that game right here.  Butler didn’t exactly come out of nowhere and fly into the NCAA tournament ‘under the radar’–they are a 5th seed after all–but no one expected them to play as well as they have.  Everyone knew that they were about as fundamentally sound of a basketball team as you’ll find anywhere, that they play nasty team defense, and don’t make mistakes on offense.  It was easy to explain away their opening round victory over UTEP–a talented but dumb team–and Murray State–a team very much like Butler, only not as good.  When they shut down the Nation’s #1 percentage offense in beating Syracuse, that’s when people started to take them seriously.

Three more college basketball games this season, and we’ll have both Final Four games betting picks today as well as the championship game on Monday.  We’ll start with the late game between Duke and West Virginia in this post, and cover the Butler vs. Michigan State game in the next one.

We’ve got four good basketball teams left in the Final Four, but only one compelling television matchup.  And we’ve got a hunch that the compelling TV matchup will pan out one way or another.  First of all, keep in mind that we’ve got a corrupt, crooked institution called the NCAA running this show.  The bigger ratings they deliver, the more money they can command for broadcast rights.  And with all due respect to all four teams, if you can’t figure out what matchup the NCAA “wants” in Monday’s championship game you’re not trying hard enough.

March Madness betting on Saturday takes us to the Elite 8 matchup between Butler and Kansas State at the Energy Solutions Arena in Salt Lake City.  Butler will be looking to advance to the Final Four after knocking off a #1 seed with their Thursday night upset of Syracuse.  Kansas State is a #2 seed and advanced to this round by outlasting Xavier in double overtime (a brutal pointspread push for those of us who had Xavier as +5 underdogs).

MARCH MADNESS–BUTLER VS. KANSAS STATE

Can Butler pull another upset and knock off Kansas State?  There’s plenty of people who think they can, and based on my power ratings alone the pointspread on this game looks to be about right.  KSU was a pointspread monster this season while Butler was a fairly average ATS team.  Butler went 15-20 ATS overall, compared to a solid 21-9 ATS mark for Kansas State.  KSU was also 18-6 ATS as a favorite, 9-2 ATS in non-conference games and an exceptional 17-6 ATS against teams with winning records.  Butler was just 7-8 ATS out of conference and 11-13 ATS against teams with winning records.