2011 March Madness betting players will have their hands full from now to Thursday, as filling out brackets are about to cause a major decline in productivity in offices across North America. The NCAA Tournament is about to get underway, and we have three big beefs with the seeds before the Big Dance gets underway. The Kentucky-Florida Dilemma The Gators won the SEC regular-season title, but the Wildcats have won two of three against Florida this year and thoroughly handled them in the conference tournament en route to their 27th championship. We’ve been big on the Gators this season, but when it comes to the seeding of the Tournament, we don’t see them being two seeds better than the Wildcats, if at all. Many who write a March Madness blog have been arguing that the Wildcats should be at least a No.3 seed, given their play down the stretch, and that sounds like a fair idea, especially when you factor in Kentucky’s non-conference slate, which was much tougher. Did Pitt Deserve A No.1 Seed? Many thought the Panthers would be in danger of losing a top seed after falling to Connecticut in the Big East tournament, but Pittsburgh was never really going to lose that spot. The Panthers did lose in the quarterfinals thanks to a Kemba Walker buzzer-beater, but Pitt has been the best team in the best conference in the country all season long, and a loss against a very good UConn team in their own right shouldn’t take that away from them. That being said, the Panthers do have a tough region in the Southeast, where they could see the aforementioned Gators, as well as Kansas State (more on them soon), Wisconsin, a St. John’s team that Pitt has already lost to, BYU and UCLA. We wouldn’t bet 5dimes on the Panthers making it to Houston. Did Kansas State Go Too High? The Wildcats were a Final Four pick heading into the season, but they had some off-court problems which brought the team down, and it came to a head in a 24-point loss at Kansas on January 29th; you wouldn’t have had the Wildcats in the Tournament after that game. Since then, the Wildcats have lost twice in 10 games, and they’ll be happy to see that Colorado didn’t make the field as the Buffaloes claimed a pair of wins over Kansas State in that time. We think that Kansas State’s preseason ranking and their run in last year’s Tournament likely played a factor in their No.5 seed in the Southeast, but we all know how dangerous it is to be a fifth-seeded team in the first round. You may want to beware of the Wildcats in your online sportsbook.
