The NCAA Basketball Tournament is the best sporting event every year.
The Super Bowl is great, the World Series seemed more important when I was a kid, and the NBA playoffs can generate a lot of excitement. Yet, the three weeks of college basketball leading up to the National Championship Game, this year staged in Houston on April 3, is glorious from the beginning. Every team that starts play on Thursday and Friday, once the field has been thinned to 64 teams, has a chance to capture the top prize.
In college football, the possibility of a national champion is reduced to four before the nearly 100 teams participate in their postseason bowl games. Football can’t really do it any other way, and assuring head-to-head competition for the National Championship adopted in recent years is a step forward.
In all likelihood, one of the high seed teams in this year’s tournament will win it all, but we have already had two top seeds eliminated this year. Only once in the past twenty seasons have all four teams seeded first in their region advanced to the Sweet 16.
On Friday, the Purdue Boilermakers became only the second top seed to lose their opening round game when they fell to upset bound Farleigh Dickinson. Five years ago, the University of Maryland, at Baltimore County, upset the Virginia Cavaliers in the first ever number one seed to fall to a 16.
Virginia bounced off that loss in 2018 with a National Championship in 2019. That would be the kind of response the Boilermakers will be looking for following their stunning defeat.
This year, the Fairleigh Dickinson Knights not only became the second 16th seed to win their opening game, they also gave nationally ranked Florida Atlantic all they could handle in their second round game. The Knights' dreams finally ended in a single digit loss to the talented Owls, 78-70.
People who have enjoyed our football picks on this site want to know if we do basketball?
Last week, two games we did select were observably dominate physically over their opponents, something we only came to know after the games started. The Miami Hurricanes clearly had the advantage Charles Barkley described as “kids against adults” while observing the same attributes with San Diego State versus overmatched Furman.
The National Football League is what we do, and while the numbers I weigh decisively pointed to Miami over Drake and San Diego State over Furman, I didn’t realize their physical advantage until I saw the games. In the NFL, I would not be surprised by how the team strengths matchup while owning both a clear understanding of team strengths and the line moves and wagering patterns that illuminate winning point spread plays.
Picking point spread sides purely by the numbers generates solid returns, but without a true appreciation of team strengths and weaknesses those presumed best selections can’t be delivered with the same level of maximum confidence.
Full season football clients get our NCAA and NBA Playoffs picks by text, it is an added benefit that isn’t sold separately because we do football first. If we had a bad run in basketball, like we did two years ago, the worst thing would be to lose football subscribers based on basketball plays.
Our wagering recommendation for the NCAA Basketball Tournament is equal amounts on both the first half score and final result. Over the first four days of this year’s action Qoxhi releases were 16-9 on final results, a solid 64% winning margin.
The first half results did not fare nearly as well, even the aforementioned game between Miami and their superiority over Drake didn’t have the first half result match the final winning result. In all, the first half record of 10-12-3 reduced a nearly 10% profit margin on opening account balances to a 6.1% profit margin.
Wagering on the first half in college basketball, and quarters in football, adds risk to a solid investment that can either enhance profits or reduce the bottom line. The first two years the Triple Play NFL plan was available online, it showed winning margins of 36% in 2019 and 39% the following season. Two years ago, the Triple Play strategy suffered a losing record, while rebounding in 2022 with their best year, returning a 75% profit margin over the entire 18 week regular season.
Winning final selections statistically more often wins the first half result too. The fact that the first half results in the opening week of NCAA Basketball Tournament play were negative could be viewed as an anomaly, and that would commonly be followed by a robust winning run.
If you want the NCAA Tournament for the remaining schedule, and all the NBA Playoff selections texted to you, sign up for the Qoxhi football season now.