More March Madness

[Raji]

There isn’t a single place on earth that epitomizes the term “March Madness” more completely than a Las Vegas sportsbook.

You think your living room is crazy just because a couple of buddies come over and spill beer on your carpet during the opening round?

Well, how about a place like the Las Vegas Hilton where they’ll be converting the Hilton Theatre into “Hoops Central.” The hall where Barry Manilow usually plays will be filled with as many as 1,500 well-lubricated hoops fanatics watching all the games on 20-foot by 20-foot screens?

That’s real madness.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Imagine what it’s like behind the counter as bookmakers try to figure out odds on 33 first-round games over the course of one night while bettors wait with bankrolls at the ready for any opportunity to beat the books.

Even at the best of times, the job of defending the casino’s money against sharps, wise guys and whales seems like a nerve-wracking endeavor. Multiply the number of games and the amount of money on the line during tourney time and you’ve got yourself an industrial-sized pressure cooker.

At least that’s what you’d think. But talking to Jay Kornegay, executive director of the race & sportsbook at the Las Vegas Hilton, the NCAA Tournament is no big deal.

According to Kornegay, there are no all-night meetings on Selection Sunday, when the matchups for the Tournament are announced after which time most sportsbooks give themselves about 12 hours to get the lines out for the first-round games. As he was needled for information about the bookmaking process at this time, Kornegay calmly dismissed the idea of his staff sweating over the numbers and, in fact, said the bookmakers at his casino don’t even have a face-to-face meeting.

“We’re communicating by computer,” the veteran bookmaker said of the routine between himself and his supervisors and managers. “We’re only talking about 32 games and it’s not like these are teams we’ve never seen before, so we don’t get too worked up. We already have a good feel for what these numbers should be. It’s not rocket science. We’re pretty comfortable with it.”

Kind of disappointing, huh? It’s kind of satisfying to imagine the bookies sweating it out for a night and maybe coming out with at least a few lines that bettors could swoop in and take advantage of.

But even a sharp like Covers Expert Ted Sevransky doesn’t think the workload is too much for the books to handle. In fact, he thinks bettors already missed out on their best chance to beat the books.

“The books are more vulnerable during conference tournaments than they are in the Big Dance,” Sevransky says. “Conference tourneys force the bookmakers to put up numbers in a big hurry for games played that day, making that weekend an outstanding opportunity for serious bettors.

“In the NCAA tourney, the books have much more time to investigate and research with individual teams playing every other day instead of every day.”

But with the state of Las Vegas expected to take about $150 million on college basketball bets this March, this can’t be just another month for the books. I don’t care what they say.

I asked Greg Sindall of SportsInteraction.com if March Madness makes him nervous.

“I wouldn’t say nervous, but you’re more aware because there’s so much action coming in all at once because there’s so much action,” Sindall said. “I’ll be paying more attention to specific games, but not all the games. But sometimes for no reason you’ll get a bunch of bets coming in on one game for apparently no reason and you have to be ready to deal with it.”

Maybe bettors should pay attention to those changing pointspreads too. Public money is one factor could give savvy bettors an edge at this time of year. As oddsmakers sit on the edge of their seats ready to react (or overreact) to betting patterns, you have to remember who is making bets on the games in this tournament. The most significant difference between the NCAA Tournament and the rest of the college hoops season is the prevalence of casual bettors.

So when the steam starts to move the lines this week, just think about exactly who might be laying the money down and whether you want to go with the crowd or if there might be value going against the movement.

Kornegay admits the casual bettors he sees are “more educated” than they used to be before the advent of the Internet, but even still, he says the crowd in Vegas at this time of year is decidedly younger and a little more square than the usual sportsbook crowd.

“This is a popular time of year, kind of like Super Bowl,” Kornegay commented. “A lot of people mark it on calendar and might be only time they visit Las Vegas. To a lot of fans, this is the best time of year, but I wish I could take pictures of them before and after.”

Maybe that’s why Kornegay and the other oddsmakers say they don’t get geeked up about March Madness. It’s one of the biggest betting events of the year and one during which the sharp bettors generally stay away and the sportsbooks get filled with goofy college kids ready to bet favorites and overs.

On second though, what do they really have to worry about?

Raji

[Raji]

Bubble Teams waiting

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -Some basketball players consider selection weekend as the crowning moment in a college career.

Joel Cornette equates it with some of his most tormenting memories. The former Butler star, now an assistant coach at Iowa, vividly recalls the euphoria he felt when Butler received an at-large bid in 2003, his senior season, and the agony of being left out a year earlier.

But it was the anxiety of living on the NCAA tournament bubble twice that makes Cornette cringe when thinking about the teams about to endure those nerve-racking moments this weekend.

''It's the ultimate lack of control of your own destiny that's the most difficult thing,'' he said. ''The worst day is Sunday, watching the selection show and it never seems to be one of the first games they announce. It always seems to be the third or fourth bracket. It's just awful.''

By this time next week, more than a dozen teams will have experienced the torment Cornette describes.

The NCAA tournament selection committee is meeting in Indianapolis this weekend, tasked with the job of selecting the 34 best at-large teams in the nation, pairing them up against the 31 automatic qualifiers and then listening to the critics instantly pick apart which teams were left out.

That's easy compared to the challenge of surviving bubble week.

The lucky teams go into the weekend with a chance to impress the 10-member committee by playing deep into their conference tournaments. The unlucky ones resort to watching tournament results, rooting for favorites, reading projections and praying committee members find them worthy of joining the 65-team field - all at a hefty emotional cost.

''People don't talk about it, but you can see it on their faces,'' Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said Thursday during the Big Ten tournament. ''It's one of those things ... like not getting a job you're supposed to get. But it's part and parcel of the process. When you have a cut tournament, it adds meaning and you're going to have joy and you're going to have disappointment.''

While many television viewers witness the players' raw reactions thanks to live feeds from college campuses, few see the tension that mounts during the days and hours preceding the selection show.

Teams prepare for unknown opponents in unknown destinations.

Assistant coaches crunch numbers and become amateur bracketologists, advising players of the potential ramifications of games being played. The distractions coaches admonish players to ignore during the regular season often become the main topic in the locker room and around town. And until the brackets are announced, the pressure only builds.

''It's awful because you practice and you prepare and in the back of your mind, there's a real level of uncertainty,'' Cornette said. ''It's one of the worst experiences you can have.''

Among the teams facing that predicament this weekend are:

-Virginia Commonwealth, winner of 24 games and the Colonial Athletic Association regular-season championship. It lost in the conference tournament and must hope the selection committee is generous enough to give the Colonial two bids.

-Kentucky, finished strong and continued to win despite losing freshman Patrick Patterson to a season-ending ankle injury. A strong showing in the SEC tournament would certainly help the Wildcats, who are usually a tournament lock.

-Ohio State, last year's national runner-up played one of the nation's most difficult schedules but may need a strong showing in the Big Ten tourney to solidify its case.

-Villanova and West Virginia. Villanova helped itself by beating Syracuse in the Big East tournament Wednesday, which many considered an elimination game, but now must wonder whether West Virginia has taken its spot by reaching the Big East semifinals.

Wildcats coach Jay Wright is playing it cool publicly.

''We're an NCAA tournament team, but that's not our decision,'' he said after Thursday's loss. ''We'll let the committee make that decision. We still think we're one of the best teams in the country, we just weren't better than Georgetown today.''

One complication is what role the midmajor schools will play in the selection process.

Five schools from non-power conferences - Xavier, Butler, Drake, Gonzaga and Davidson - were all ranked in the Top 25 last week. Butler, Davidson and Drake all earned automatic bids by winning conference tournaments, taking themselves off the bubble. It also means some additional at-large spots will be open, giving schools like Gonzaga, VCU, St. Mary's, Illinois State and South Alabama hope they'll get in.

One school Cornette supports is VCU.

''I've seen Virginia Commonwealth a couple of times this year and last year, and they can compete with anyone,'' he said. ''They're definitely one of the best 64 teams. But to know you have a team that's more than capable of competing against the big teams and you're worrying about winning one game, it's a tough deal.''

And losing only makes the weeklong wait more difficult for everyone - as Cornette knows all too well.

''From a player's perspective or a coach's perspective, I understand that because most of the time, to some extent, they're in control of their own destiny,'' Delany said. ''Here it's a committee process, and there always seems to be about 20 teams in that position, so it is tough on them.''

Raji