Best bonus bets on NCAA Basketball games

The first NCAA Men’s Basketball March Madness Tournament in two years is approaching quickly. 

It is very strange to say that: the first one in two years. Usually, you can count on two things in mid to late March: March Madness, and spring training Major League Baseball. Then April brings the Final Four and National Championship, and the MLB regular season.

But die to the COVID-19 pandemic, the last NCAA Tournament game we saw was Virginia knocking off Texas Tech to have the ultimate comeback story: the first top seed ever to lose in the first round in 2018 (in a 20-point blowout loss, no less), to its first national championship in 2019.

So we are a few weeks away from what should be the most wagered on event in the history of sports. So many more states have legal online sports betting since 2019, and this should be an epic event.

Many bettors will be looking for free picks during Championship Week leading up to the NCAA Selection Show, and then for the actual three week March Madness event.

But how do you know which ones to go with when there are so many sites, Twitter accounts, and random people offering you picks everywhere you turn?

If this is your first time betting on the tournament and Championship Week (all the various conference tournaments leading up to the NCAA Tournament), there is a lot of information out there for you. You should do your research. Do not just see someone posting lots of $$$$ on a Twitter account and immediately go with them.

On this American Gambler site alone, there are many trend stories, which track information on how seeds do at the tournament. You can see how each team has done against the spread and on the total numbers.

The main thing for the NCAA Tournament is, don’t get fixated on a team until you see its path in the bracket. Until the seeds are done, a team might look like a bad play, but then a path could open to make a run to the Elite Eight. Don’t fall into the big upsets trap: most of the time, the best teams advance. Now, trying to figure out which metrics to use to figure out the best teams? That might be harder.

Maybe the best thing to do is start tracking people now, and see how they are doing leading up to the tournament. 

There are a lot of games every day. Try to focus in on one or two games that look good: if you are trying to bet all 16 First Round games each day, you are almost certain to lose money.