The End of the First Round

OK, a couple more, then on to tomorrow:

Utah -1.5 -102, 2.04 units to win 2 units

Holy crap, a favorite. In our defense, Utah did open as the underdog but the books have been steadily moving the line until Utah is now the favorite, and it's not because a lot of recreational bettors are on the Utes or anything. I don't know if there has ever been a #12 seed (they always win! always!) that has been picked in more brackets than Arizona this year. Nobody seems to mind that the only reason they are even in is because the committee didn't want to end their streak if it was even close. Arizona is a very shallow team, and rely heavily on Hill, Budinger, and Wise to do all of the scoring. Because they can't let any of those guys (especially Hill) get into foul trouble, we'll probably see a lot of zone defense, which allows Utah's 3-point snipers (Borha, Green) room to shoot. No matter what defense Arizona plays, they are terrible on that end of the court - #135 nationally by Pomeroy's stats. Utah is #20. Arizona only won two games (Oregon, Oregon St.) away from home all season. TWO! Etc, etc, etc.

Wisconsin +2.5 +100, 1 unit to win 1 unit

Grover is always wary of Wisconsin because the stats guys always seem to have them rated higher than they end up performing. But, even looking at these teams with that caveat, this matchup looks virtually even to me. And the books aren't willing to let the line go any higher than 2.5 or 3 on FSU even though they are getting 3 bets on FSU for every Wisconsin bet that comes in. Pomeroy has Wisconsin winning this game by 1, and we'll take the points in a toss-up and give the books credit for knowing something here.

I think I'll take a night off from getting killed in the NBA and go find a bar to watch the college games. Good night everybody.