Which Teams Are Undervalued in Public Picks for the Men’s College Basketball Tournament?

When you're in a small enough bracket pool for the men's college basketball tournament, you can go chalk. You can allow others to make mistakes, simply picking the optimal team for each slot.

But the bigger the pool, the more incentive you have to be different. If you deviate from the crowd and get points the rest aren't getting, it's an easy way to vault up the leaderboard.

Lucky for us, we know which ways the general public is leaning. A handful of sites publish public pick data, showing what percentage of brackets have teams advancing to each round. Our specific pools will be different -- brackets in Durham, North Carolina, will likely skew toward a different champion than those in Auburn, Alabama -- but this can give us a general idea of where we may need to deviate.

To find those undervalued teams, my preferred route is to lean on betting markets. Given the amount of money poured into them, betting markets tend to be efficient, giving us a good read on the real-life odds teams make it to various stages.

Below, we're going to compare FanDuel Sportsbook's college basketball betting odds to the public pick data from Yahoo! to see which teams are undervalued. We'll start with the most important pick to nail -- our national champion -- and then go from there.

Sleeper National Championship Picks for the Men's College Basketball Tournament

In most instances, you're not going to need to go too off the board in order to take down your pool.

Thus, we're going to look at just the schools picked to win it all in at least 1% of brackets. The table below lists those schools along with their implied national championship odds at FanDuel Sportsbook. Then, the "Difference" column shows the gap between the two numbers. The larger the positive number there, the higher the betting markets are on the team relative to the public pick percentages.

Betting markets agree that Duke should be the favorite. However, there is incentive to deviate once the pool gets large enough as the public appears a bit more confident in them than they should.

The most undervalued team is Houston. They've got a super tough potential second-round matchup against an underrated Gonzaga team, but that matchup could be allowing the public to underrate Houston to win it all.

Sleeper Round of 4 Picks for the Men's College Basketball Tournament

Here, a disclaimer about betting markets is required.

For the public pick percentages, the total for each region will sum up to 100%.

For betting markets, the sum will be larger due to the hold at sportsbooks. If those markets added up to 100%, they'd go bankrupt in a hurry.

Thus, when you're comparing pick percentages to betting markets, I wouldn't simply leap toward any team that has higher betting odds. Instead, I'd just use them as a guiding light, seeing which teams are definitively overvalued and then finding pivots off of them within that region.

With that caveat in mind, here are the regional champion odds compared to how often the public has them picked to get there.

Here, Duke and Michigan State grade out as the most over-picked teams.

In the East with Duke, the betting markets are higher on Alabama than the public, making them a potential pivot.

However, numberFire's college basketball tournament predictions have Alabama in the Round of 4 only 16.7% of the time, lower than the public. Instead, they've got Wisconsin as the undervalued team, putting them in the Round of 4 7.0% of the time. Betting markets also view the Badgers as undervalued, making them a large-pool pivot.

As for Michigan State, Auburn isn't a bad pick in the South as betting markets and the public are largely aligned. However, 3 seed Iowa State is a value in the betting markets, and numberFire views them as almost equally likely to win the region as Michigan State. They seem to be the preferred pivot here.

Sleeper Round of 16 Picks for the Men's College Basketball Tournament

The above caveat about betting markets applies here, as well. This exercise should do more to illustrate which teams we'll want to pivot off of than actively seek out.

Here's the comparison of each team's odds to reach the Round of 16 versus how often they're being picked to get there. For this one, we'll up the cutoff to be teams picked to the Round of 16 in at least 20% of brackets.

It's not super common for a high seed to be undervalued, so it is noteworthy that Florida is higher in betting markets than public picks. We can feel safe riding chalk there even in larger pools.

The most overvalued teams -- outside of the aforementioned Michigan State -- are Kentucky, Michigan, and Memphis. Memphis is actually an underdog in the first round, so you can get leverage off of them with the patented 12-5 upset early. Maryland -- the 4 seed and a beneficiary of a Memphis upset -- is undervalued by the public to advance to the second week, potentially for this reason.

Kentucky gets a tough Illinois team in the second round, and the betting market is higher on Illinois than the public. Kentucky's still the more likely team to advance, but Illinois stands out as a differentiation point in larger pools.

It's a similar setup with Michigan: their potential Round of 32 opponent -- Texas A&M -- grades out as a value relative to betting markets. A blended ranking of all 68 teams in the men's tournament has Texas A&M as the better team straight up, allowing us to take the 4 seed to defeat the 5 regardless of pool size.

You can also download our FREE college basketball printable bracket.

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Which bets stand out to you for this year's tourney? Check out FanDuel Sportsbook's latest college basketball betting odds to see the full menu of options.

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The above author is a FanDuel employee and is not eligible to compete in public daily fantasy contests or place sports betting wagers on FanDuel. The advice provided by the author does not necessarily represent the views of FanDuel. Taking the author's advice will not guarantee a successful outcome. You should use your own judgment when participating in daily fantasy contests or placing sports wagers.