Numbers to Consider Before Making Your Title Game Bet
Scott Morris | April 3, 2017
The NCAA men’s National Champion in basketball will be crowned on Monday night. The three weeks that begin in March and culminate the first week of April are fondly known as March Madness.
Sixty-eight teams began, just two remain and only one will cut down the nets at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona as the national champion.
On Saturday, the Gonzaga Bulldogs held on for a hard-fought win over the South Carolina Gamecocks in one of the national semifinal games to reach this point. The North Carolina Tar Heels outlasted the Oregon Ducks in the other semifinal setting up Monday’s national title game.
North Carolina opened as a 1.5-point favorite late Saturday and as of early Monday morning that spread remains the same. The over/under point total is sitting on 153.5.
Here are a few numbers from previous national championships games to consider.
This is the 11th time North Carolina has played for the national title, while it is the first time for Gonzaga. North Carolina has 5 national titles while Gonzaga has zero.
Villanova won last season’s national championship, which was its second after winning in 1985.
Along with Villanova, six other schools have won two national titles since 1985. Those six included Duke with five, North Carolina with 3, Kentucky with 3, Louisville with 2, Florida with 2, UConn with 2 and Kansas with 2.
Since 1985, a No. 1 seed has won the national title 18 times and this year it will be No. 19 since both teams were No. 1 seeds in their respective regions.
Since 1985, the dogs are 17-14 against the number, which included Duke’s 5-point win in the national championship game in 2015 over Wisconsin as a 1-point dog.
The dogs have covered the past three national title games, with all three winning outright.
The UNDER has cashed since 1985 in 17 of 31 games and over the past seven seasons the UNDER has cashed five times.
The current point total is 153.5. The highest-ever point total for a national championship game was 163.5 in 2001 when Arizona played Duke with the UNDER cashing.
The lowest point total was 112 in 1985 when Villanova played Georgetown. That game cashed OVER as the teams combined to score 130 total points.
