Handicapping the Final 4

Pretend for a moment that the degenerate act of sports gambling hasn't been curtailed in a mafioso attempt by the United States government to make sure everyone's paying their taxes on gambling victories and participating in the forms of gambling they can track and/or fix (whoops, did I say fix? I meant, um... influence?).

(Come to think of it, gambling is wrong and immoral and I'm glad this Christian society doesn't stand for it in any form).

But, you know, pretend for a moment this isn't the case.

Sports bettors would be freaking out right now, as they always do on Final 4 eve.

For you see, my degenerate friends, as a victim of circumstance, the Final 4 is year-in-and-year-out one of the most gambled-upon events of the sporting calendar. This is because outside of maybe the NBA Finals, it's the final gambling "event" of what we can refer to as the sports "season" until college football kicks off again in late August. Lots of people are going to try and make some summer vacation money this Saturday and Monday before taking a four-month hiatus from sports wagering (assuming of course, that sports wagering, especially wagering on college sports, was still legal).

So if I know this, and if you (possibly now by extension) know this then, of course, Vegas knows this and wants to take advantage of it.

The public money has been flowing in on the two favorites, Georgetown and Florida (no surprise) and the two Overs (even less surprise).

All four teams have been broken down and analyzed in every way imaginable. If you want to look at a statistical matrix that exists, this will be the 7th and 8th meetings in the Final 4 semifinals of a 1-seed vs. a 2-seed. In five of the previous six meetings, the team that gets a higher percentage of their points from their front-court has won. This gives the slight edge to Georgetown (63.7%) over Ohio State (61.3%) and a significant edge to Florida (60.8%) over UCLA (53.4%).

The only team with a front-court disadvantage that pulled off the victory was Duke in '91, when they upset UNLV. Pat Forde has made an astute argument comparing this year's UCLA team to that Duke team who had been embarrassed by UNLV in the '90 title game.

Then again, Pat Forde is a smug little leprechaun.

But then again, UCLA is an inspired pick, and appears to be a sharp pick. Florida seems to present the same match-up problems that Kansas presented, and the Bruins weathered the Jayhawks just fine.

My picks for Saturday:

Georgetown -1 (high confidence)
UCLA +3 (medium confidence)
Florida/UCLA Under 130.5 (medium confidence)
Georgetown/Ohio State Under 129.5 (low confidence)