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NCAA Basketball: 5 best value bets for winning 2019-20 national title

By Zach Stearman

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA - APRIL 08: The Virginia Cavaliers celebrate with the trophy after their 85-77 win over the Texas Tech Red Raiders during the 2019 NCAA men's Final Four National Championship game at U.S. Bank Stadium on April 08, 2019 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA - APRIL 08: The Virginia Cavaliers celebrate with the trophy after their 85-77 win over the Texas Tech Red Raiders during the 2019 NCAA men's Final Four National Championship game at U.S. Bank Stadium on April 08, 2019 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images) /
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MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA – APRIL 08: Head coach Tony Bennett of the Virginia Cavaliers cuts down the net after his teams 85-77 win over the Texas Tech Red Raiders in the 2019 NCAA men’s Final Four National Championship game at U.S. Bank Stadium on April 08, 2019 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA – APRIL 08: Head coach Tony Bennett of the Virginia Cavaliers cuts down the net after his teams 85-77 win over the Texas Tech Red Raiders in the 2019 NCAA men’s Final Four National Championship game at U.S. Bank Stadium on April 08, 2019 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images) /

Finding profitable futures bets is a challenge. Which NCAA Basketball teams are the best value bets to bring home the title this April?

Every sports bettor dreams of putting down some money on a long shot team to win a championship and seeing that bet pay off huge a few months down the line. After all, it seems like every year, one of the major sports has its champion seemingly fly under the radar, leading to huge paydays for those lucky enough to have a ticket on the Cinderella team. Future betting is extremely difficult to turn a profit in, however. I looked in-depth at every team’s odds on Bovada.lv to determine which teams have offer bettors the best value on NCAA Basketball Title futures bets this season.

To do my analysis, I looked at all the previous NCAA champions since the year 2000, and I charted where those teams started out in the preseason polls. I created a formula that converted a teams preseason ranking to their probability of winning the title. For example, the preseason number one team has won three championships since 2000. The number two team has won four. I don’t think the number two team actually has better odds, it is just a fluke due to a small sample size, but the teams rated #1 and #2 can be each assumed to win the title about 3.5 times every 20 years. This gives these teams a 17.5% chance to win each season.

I went down my Top 25 from prophetratings.com, and gave each rating an assumed probability. Then, I fit the data to a trend line to give a formula which gave a smooth result. In the end, the top-ranked preseason team was given a 19% chance to win the title. The #5 team was given a 6% chance. The #20 team was given a 1.05% chance, etc. You get the picture.  Finally, I assumed a $100 bet on each team and used the probability and the listed Bovada odds to calculate an expected value for each team.

Anyways, enough monotonous details about the methodology. These are the five teams most likely to turn a profit on a future title bet. Let’s get into it.

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