Let’s see what we can glean from yesterday’s results that are of interest as you attack local, Vegas, and online sportsbooks on Friday.   Should you let the short sample of yesterday’s results influence your decisions on Friday?  Your call.

1. If you consider Duke to have covered their game, and Gonzaga not to have covered theirs, dogs had a 9-7 edge. Totals favored the over by somewhere in the 11-5, 10-5-1, 10-6 range.  Your mileage may vary.

2. Favorites of 20 or more (Duke, North Carolina, Connecticut, Memphis) were 3-1 against the pointspread and 3-1 to the over.  Both results fly in the face of what usually happens in games with huge favorites in the first round.

3. If you had the Chattanooga/Connecticut game under the total, avert your eyes.   Jim Calhoun’s absence due to illness may have been the difference between the game staying under, or going over late, which is what happened. UConn scored on their last 10 possessions.  According to the play-by-play (admittedly always a little dicey) UConn shot the ball in 10 seconds or less on 7 of those 10 possessions.  If Calhoun is glowering on the sidelines don’t you think the Huskies, up 50 in the closing minutes, are running clock and conserving energy for Saturday instead running, gunning, and padding stats?  This isn’t a complaint, by the way, as I wasn’t involved in that total.  I did have the Morgan State/Oklahoma game under, and found Todd Bozeman’s strategy of fouling in the closing seconds down 26 rather unique.  Of course, I really shouldn’t complain, as I thought long and hard about playing Thursday night’s Blazers/Cavaliers game under before passing. That one went over by a bucket in overtime.

4. Best performance by a conference was the Big 12 going 3-0 straight up and against the spread, with all 3 pointspread covers by (Texas, Oklahoma, and Texas A&M) by double digits. Other noteable performances saw the ACC go 3-1 to the pointspread (considering Duke a cover), while the Big 10 was 1-3.

5. The whole “spend the first weekend of the tournament hanging out with hundreds of sweaty guys we don’t know in Vegas” thing has always been lost on me.  At home I control the TV, the beer is on demand, and I seem to find ways to get bets down.  But for guys who consider online sportsbooks to have been “made illegal”, haven’t had the proper amount of male bonding in their lifetime, or simply are looking for an excuse to ditch the office and family, Vegas is still a popular destination.  But according to a couple of the sweaty bonders who were in touch on Thursday, the crowds are, as expected, a little thinner out there this year.

Good luck to you on Friday, and be careful.