The Lunatic’s Handicapping has been a complete disaster. After finally beating some of the bracketologists on who the Selection Committee would pick, he was feeling like he was in for a good year of picking the games. Then, the last few weeks was a simple reminder of why I don’t go to Vegas Sportsbooks any more.
Despite a winning record against the over-unders, the Lunatic found himself down an imaginary 119 dollars. And that was good compared to how he did against the spread – where he was down 210. If you basically took any team the Lunatic didn’t, you would have done pretty well.
In the Elite 8, I picked Xavier to keep the game close against Gonzaga (it was not), and the other three favorites to cover small spreads. Both Kansas and Florida lost, and UNC’s exciting 2 point victory wasn’t enough to cover the 2.5 spread.
This exercise is always a reminder to me of how hard this is. The team that Vegas favored (minus their two games that were pick’em games) went 45-17 in the tournament so far. But only 28 of those 45 teams covered the spread. So, you have to figure out which lines are too many points.
I broke the games into three groups to see where I went wrong. Games with lines <= 4 points (basically, a game that should could down to last couple of possessions), lines from 4.5 – 9.5, and double digit games. I am going to leave the 2 pick’em games out – ironically, though, I got both those games right.
On Double Digits games, all 17 times the favorite won. But only 9 covered the double digit spread. I foolishly only picked 4 underdogs to keep the game close – and went 2-2 in those. Which means I went 6-7 in the other games. But this shows how hard it can be. Obviously, most of us would have picked the favorite to win these games – but it isn’t enough to pick who wins, they need to also cover.
On middle games, the Vegas favorite won 15 of 21 times. But the Vegas favorite covered only 9.5 times. So, you would have been better off picking the underdog all the time. Of course, the Lunatic didn’t do that. I picked the underdog only 9 times – sadly 6 of those times, the favorite covered. So, this is definitely where things went wrong for me. I only won 6.5 games of this group. The 9 times I thought the underdog would keep it close, I only was right 3 times. And of the 12 times I picked the favorite, 5 of them were upset, and 3 others didn’t cover the spread.
So, with the close games, it makes sense this is where the upsets happened. The Vegas Favorite went 13-11 in these games. Interestingly, 2 of those 13 didn’t cover the spread, despite the spread being less than 4 points (of course, I picked the favorite in both of those games). I picked the underdog to win 13 of these games and went 6-6-1. That means for the 11 favorites I picked, I went 6-5 on the winner, but because I was unlucky enough to pick the only 2 winners in this group not to cover, my favorites fall to 5-7.
So, I did pretty poorly, all around – but 14 of my losses were times that I knew the winner – I picked the favorite to win and they did – they just didn’t cover the spread. Add into it the 10% the house takes for each victory, and it you can see how easy it is to lose quickly. If you also include the Lunatic curse of any team I lock loses (I went 3-10 on the games I locked), and that means lots of money for the sportsbook.
Thus, I have decided it would be horrible to allow the Lunatic curse to decide any of the remaining games – I can’t get to a winning record anyways. So, Lunatic handicapping is over for the tournament. If you need a gambling report, here is the information to know.
Gonzaga is a 6.5 point favorite against South Carolina in the first game. According to covers.com, 54% of the public are picking the underdog Gamecocks, but of the 29 covers.com experts, 21 of them support the Bulldogs. The experts and public are in more agreement on the over/under – with both leaning towards the teams to score more than the 137.5 O/U line.
North Carolina is a 4.5 point favorite against Oregon in the second game. Once again, the public and experts disagree on the spread – 52% of the public have the Ducks, 57% of the experts have the Tar Heels. The public loves the over of 153 in this game – in fact, they like it so much that the O/U has moved up 4.5 points from when the line opened. The experts also say take the over, but they are more split (56%).
So, there you have it – no picks from the Lunatic – who obviously doesn’t know what he is doing. The Vegas lines and the covers.com experts think we will have a Gonzaga / UNC championship game – while the public at least like Oregon and South Carolina to keep the games close if not pull the upset. But as the women’s tournament reminded us – you might be able to use stats to figure out who will likely win the game, but there is a reason we play the games. The only thing that you can truly know is that by the end of the night, we will have two well-deserving teams who won their right to play for the championship on the court. Who could ask for more than that?
Enjoy tonight’s games – they should be fantastic!!!!