March Madness: Best Chances To Win It All?
Writing by admin on Tuesday, 13 of March , 2007 at 5:31 pm
Yeah, so their football team found a way to lose the big one. But the Ohio State Buckeyes are poised to extract some sweet revenge on the basketball court.
Out on the Strip, the Buckeyes opened at 8-1 to win the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Now OSU sits at 4-1 on the futures market; only the defending champion Florida Gators (5-2) and the potent North Carolina Tar Heels (3-1) are getting shorter odds to come out on top. But neither of those teams has Greg Oden. (Check out Bodog Sportsbook NCAA Tournament odds.)
Oden’s name was being whispered in the same reverent tones as LeBron James’ going into the 2006-07 season. If it weren’t for the NBA’s controversial decision to put a de facto age restriction on the league’s draft, Oden would almost certainly have been picked first overall straight out of Lawrence North High School in Indianapolis. But the Oden hype has diminished somewhat – not because the 7-foot center hasn’t been dominant for OSU; rather, there’s this kid named Kevin Durant playing for the Texas Longhorns you may have heard about.
Durant may be a freak of nature, but his Longhorns are in third place in the Big 12 standings and stuck in the field at 15-1 to win the Tournament. Oden’s Buckeyes, on the other hand, are the top-ranked team in the polls at 24-3 overall, 12-1 in Big Ten action and 14-10-1 against the spread. Think the polls are a joke? You’re not alone. Perhaps you’ll be more convinced by OSU’s No. 3 ranking on the RPI list, or their No. 5 status in the Pythagorean-based Pomeroy Ratings.
There are very good reasons to go with Florida (No. 4 Pomeroy) or North Carolina (No. 1) at the big dance. However, it takes something special to make it all the way through six Tournament contests and come out champions. For last year’s Gators, that something special was 6-foot-11 center Joakim Noah, who also could have been drafted first overall by the Toronto Raptors had he not decided to go back to school.
Oden is that much better. Noah is giving the Gators 12.7 points, eight rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.7 blocks in 25.5 minutes per game. That’s not too shabby. Oden? Nothing less than 15.5 points, 9.5 boards, 0.8 assists and 3.6 blocks in 29.4 minutes. As a freshman. And against tougher opponents; Ohio State is ranked No. 30 in the nation in strength of schedule, compared to No. 48 for Florida. Even better, Oden didn’t start playing until December, missing almost the entire wimpy non-conference portion of the season. Now that’s the kind of player you can ride to a championship.
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Category: Online College Basketball Betting
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