2016 March Madness: Day 1 Betting Recap

2016 March Madness: Day 1 Betting Recap

Day 1 of the 2016 NCAA Tournament certainly lived up to the hype, with a good share of upsets and great endings. Below we’ll quickly recap the opening day:

– Some big news happened before any games tipped-off, with Cal point guard Tyrone Wallace breaking his hand in practice Wednesday. Following the announcement Cal dropped from -6.5 to -4.5 against Hawaii for Friday’s Round of 64 game.

– The two highest bet games of the day was Little Rock/Purdue and Yale/Baylor, and both ended up resulting in big upsets and wins for sportsbooks.

– Overs went 10-6 on the opening day.

– Favorites went 10-6 ATS on Thursday and teams getting <50% of spread bets went 9-7 ATS. - Throughout the week we wrote about fading the trendy underdog and it continued to be successful on Thursday. Favorites receiving <50% of spread bets went 4-1 ATS:

– 9-seeded favorites over the 8-seed had historically been poor, going just 5-12 ATS since 2005. However, on Thursday they went 2-1: Butler (-4) over Texas Tech 71-61 and UConn (-3) over Colorado 74-67. The only 8-seed to cover was USC, and just barely:

– William Hill sportsbook was likely very happy with the result, as Providence was their most wagered-on spread bet of the day, followed by Hampton, Kentucky and Arizona. Of the four, only Kentucky covered.

– Kevin Ollie’s win and cover with UConn pushes his postseason ATS record to 14-4 after the Huskies came back to beat Colorado.

– Baylor unraveled against Yale (closed +210 on moneyline), but did have this nice block in the first half for their efforts:

– In the game of the day, #12-seed Little Rock pulled off a massive comeback to stun Purdue in double overtime 85-83. Little Rock reached +1410 on the live moneyline ($100 to make $1,400) while Purdue was as high as -3500 ($3,500 to make $100):

– Underdogs went just 2-14 straight up with the only wins coming from Little Rock (+348) and Yale (+213).

Day 2 of the NCAA Tournament kicks off at noon today with Syracuse taking on Dayton. Be sure to keep up with all the latest line moves, betting trends, breaking injuries and more at our Free Live Odds page.

Check out our Bracket Simulator to find out the probabilities for each team to advance in each round.

We’re also currently offering our Pro trial for 4 days, which includes all picks, bet signals, betting trends, and more. Our NCAAB Best Bets are up over +22 units on the season and have five more picks for Friday’s slate.

Dan McGuire

Dan McGuire is the Operations Manager and soccer specialist at Sports Insights. You can find him on Twitter (@ArsenalDMC) and he can be reached directly at dan.mcguire@actionnetwork.com.

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