NCAA Tournament by the odds: Vegas view of each Final Four team

By Case Keefer (contact)

Wednesday, March 28, 2018 | 2 a.m.

Bettors are forced to act relatively fast on the first two weekends of the NCAA Tournament, with only a few days separating matchups being set and the games playing out.

There’s less urgency heading into the Final Four. With five days between the final pair of quarterfinals and the start of the semifinals, gamblers have more time to gather their thoughts and examine the four teams vying for the national championship.

That’s at least the approach Talking Points will take. The blog will get to picking all the games by tipoff, but first, let’s take stock of how each team reached the right to go to San Antonio this weekend from a betting perspective.

Loyola-Chicago

Four tournament wins and covers have clinched it for the Ramblers: They’ve now been the most profitable college basketball team to bet on the point spread all season. They’re 23-9-1 against the spread, including six straight victories versus the number. It’s just too bad more bettors didn’t benefit off of them. The Missouri Valley Conference is never an action-driver during the season, and even in Loyola’s marquee non-conference game at Florida, the money came in against it. The Ramblers closed a 16.5-point underdog after opening as low as plus-15 ahead of their 65-59 win at the O’Connell Center.

That victory has often been cited during their tournament run, but rarely heeded. Loyola drew the majority of the action as closing 1-point underdogs in the first run against Miami, but has seen the bulk of the money come against it in the next three games. Both their 69-68 win over UNR as 1-point underdogs and their 78-62 blowout of Kansas State as 1-point underdogs were favorable results for the house.

Loyola is built like the perfect bracket-buster. They’ve used experience, slow pace, and yes, a little luck to reach the Final Four. With four upperclassmen starters including Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year Clayton Custer, Loyola is the oldest team remaining. And it’s played like it, with a shrewd strategy of bearing down on defense and draining the shot clock on offense. The Ramblers have played 13 fewer NCAA Tournament possessions than the next lowest Final Four team, Michigan, and a staggering 36 less than the team with the most, Kansas. That’s put them in position to hit a semi-miraculous three game-winning shots in the final seconds in each of the first three rounds. The good fortune shouldn’t be used as a license to doubt the Ramblers. They’ve gotten too proficient at erasing doubt.

Michigan

There’s a natural inclination to juxtapose this year’s Michigan team with the program’s last one to reach the Final Four, the 2013 Wolverines. It’s not a good comparison. Aside from their jerseys, similarities cease. The national runner-ups from four years ago were as talented and athletic as any team in the country, with four players who were first-round NBA Draft picks in the next two years. Michigan doesn’t have a single player who’s guaranteed to reach that plateau on this year’s roster. The 2013 team stampeded opponents with their offense behind Trey Burke; the 2018 team stifles opponents defensively with Moritz Wagner as the centerpiece.

Bringing two teams with such distinct personalities this far is a testament to the coaching prowess of John Beilein, who’s improved to 22-11-1 against the spread lifetime in the NCAA Tournament. Michigan’s players don’t have to adjust to a system; the system adjusts to them. And opposing teams are hard-pressed to match Beilein’s adjustments at all. Pulling away in the second half of games has become a standard of the Wolverines’ current 13-game winning streak, during which they’re 10-2-1 against the spread.

Carrying that type of run into the Final Four makes them more comparable with a team like 2011 NCAA Tournament champions Connecticut. Like the 2011 Huskies, the 2018 Wolverines came into March Madness on a high off of winning their conference tournament. They both had topsy-turvy seasons with capable but volatile offenses that stabilized behind smothering defenses. And they both were slotted with the No. 3 seed in the West Region. Michigan doesn’t have a Kemba Walker, though. At least not yet. The style this year’s Wolverines play lends itself to close games, meaning if they’re to win their first title in 29 years, it’s probably going to take a heroic performance from someone on the roster.

Villanova

Villanova has a chance to become the first team since 2009 North Carolina to enter the tournament as the betting favorite to win the title, and proceed to cover in every game en route to doing it. Wildcat bettors haven’t even encountered any close calls yet, as Villanova has covered by an average of 7 points per game in the tournament. If the Wildcats’ offense keeps producing at the same rate, they’re likely to continue down the path of the ’09 Tar Heels and cap off their run with a pair of blowout Final Four wins. Villanova has scored 1.205 points per possession and posted a .418 three-point percentage, which are both slight upticks from its already lethally-efficient regular season.

It’s instinct for some bettors to see statistics like that and immediately think, “regression,” as a reason to bet against it continuing. But that might be a mistake in the case of Villanova. The Wildcats have been one of the most offensively efficient teams in college basketball history this season. They have the second highest adjusted offensive rating, behind 2015 Wisconsin, ever tracked in the 16-year history of kenpom.com. Also, they’ve already seen some regression and survived. Villanova shot only 33 percent in the Elite 8 on Sunday with Jalen Brunson and Mikal Bridges, the best one-two punch in the nation, combining to miss all nine of their three-point attempts. The Wildcats were still never virtually at any danger of losing and rarely weren’t covering in a 71-59 victory over Texas Tech as 6-point favorites.

If sports books don’t break last year’s $41.2 million win on basketball in the month of March, Villanova will be looked at as one of the biggest reasons why. Bettors have backed the Wildcats consistently throughout the tournament both in the futures, where they shifted past Virginia as the favorite in the days before the tournament began, and on a game-to-game basis. The last few Final Fours have arrived without a resounding favorite. That ends this year, as Villanova is as high as minus-120 (risking $1.20 to win $1) around town to win the championship.

Kansas

Many have regarded this year’s Final Four as a grouping of two surprises to go with two juggernauts. The Jayhawks fall firmly in the latter category. That’s probably inevitable given the prestige of Kansas’ program, but it doesn’t accurately describe this year’s team. Kansas was as high as 16-to-1 in future odds before the season, the biggest price attached to the program since the 2008-2009 season after it lost the entire starting lineup from its last championship team. On Selection Sunday, Kansas was the third choice in odds to come out of the Midwest Region — behind Duke and Michigan State. The Jayhawks have uncharacteristically been an underdog in five games this season, going 4-1 straight-up in the contests including wins in each of the last three.

That doesn’t mean the Jayhawks have always been trustworthy at the betting window this year. At 20-16-1 against the spread, in fact, they have the worst record of all the Final Four teams. Kansas wasn’t profitable on the year until it ran through the Big 12 Conference tournament with three covers in three days. The NCAA Tournament hasn’t gone as smoothly, as the Jayhawks have punished their backers with a pair of bad beats. Seton Hall made a meaningless 3 at the buzzer to cover plus-4.5 in an 83-79 round of 32 loss, before Clemson erased a 20-point deficit in the Sweet 16 to fall within plus-5 in an 80-76 defeat.

Kansas has a Player of the Year finalist in Devonte’ Graham, but it’s been the emergence of Mississippi State transfer Malik Newman that’s led them in the tournament. Newman struggled with consistency during the year, but he’s now the leading scorer left in the tournament at 21.8 points per game. He’s also helped Kansas shore up some of its defensive issues. The Jayhawks still have the worst defensive numbers of any team in the Final Four, so it remains to be seen how they’ll hold up against the Wildcats. But based on the rest of the season, it’s appropriate and arguably advantageous that Kansas is the underdog.

Case Keefer can be reached at 702-948-2790 or [email protected]. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.