Will point total unders continue to hit at a high clip in the NCAA men's Sweet 16?
Welcome to the Winner’s Circle, a weekly column by Bet For The Win senior writer Prince J. Grimes.
The first two rounds of the NCAA men’s tournament produced a ton of fireworks, though that wasn’t necessarily because of high scoring outputs.
Following a regular season where scoring appeared up at an average of about 71 points per game, according to NCAA stats, totals have come crashing down for March Madness.
According to Covers, point total overs hit 51.7 percent of the time this season, leaving the unders with a 48.3 percent rate. However, unders have hit at a 67 percent rate during the tournament, according to BetMGM’s John Ewing.
That leaves the obvious questions of why there’s been a sudden flip, and will the trend continue into the Sweet 16 and through the Final Four?
UNDERs in the NCAA Tournament this year:
First Four: 3-1
Thursday: 10-6
Friday: 14-2
Saturday: 6-2
Sunday: 2-6Overall 35-17 (67%)
— John Ewing (@johnewing) March 20, 2023
It’s hard to pinpoint one reason for this trend, but the most obvious that jumps out to me is how good the defenses have been in the tournament. The old adage that defense wins championships has proven true thus far.
More teams with top-50 adjusted offensive efficiency rankings made the tournament field than teams with top-50 defensive rankings. However, the teams with better defenses have persevered. Of the remaining 16 teams, 10 are top 20 in defensive efficiency, according to KenPom. Only seven teams are top 20 in offensive efficiency.
It’s also been the teams that play at a slower pace to find more success, which is helping to keep scores down. Only five remaining teams have a top-50 adjusted tempo ranking. Ten teams rank 100 or lower, including Houston, which plays at the 341st fastest tempo in the country — or 23rd slowest — while holding the fourth best defensive efficiency.
It’s been these teams that have best imposed their styles of play on games thus far, and with more of these teams remaining than up-tempo, high-scoring teams, I expect more of the same in the latter rounds of the tournament.
The only question for bettors is whether sportsbooks have adjusted their lines to account for the lower outputs. At BetMGM, the average total for the eight Sweet 16 games is 139.5 — which certainly feels lower based on the number of 140-plus games I saw earlier in the tournament. Tennessee and Florida Atlantic have a Sweet 16-low line of 131.5.
My advice for people who want to dabble in this market is to find the matchups between teams with opposing styles, and squeeze the juice out of those. For instance, Gonzaga and UCLA have a 145.5-point line, which is high for a UCLA game but not the Zags. I would follow the trend and bet on UCLA to keep that number down.