Sunday's Exciting NCAA Tournament ATS Endings

by Matty O'Shea - Pregame.com Senior Editor

We've been telling you how important it is to get the best line.  Sunday was a prime example with literally millions of dollars changing hands based upon the numbers played!

Here's a recap of exactly how those close games ended . . .

The NCAA Tournament's top two Cinderella stories turned into pumpkins on Sunday, but bettors on both sides of 13th-seeded Vermont and 14th-seeded Bucknell had to sweat out the point spread results until the final buzzer sounded. In fact, five of the eight games on Sunday had their spreads determined in the final minutes, including the lone straight-up upset when 10th-seeded North Carolina State knocked out defending national champion and second-seeded Connecticut.

N.C. State started off the day by pulling off an impressive 65-62
straight-up victory as a 4 ½-point underdog on senior Julius Hodge’s three-point play with 4.3 seconds left after the Huskies had tied the
game at 62 with 15.8 seconds remaining.

Later in the day, the dream ended for Vermont and Bucknell, as both longshots barely missed beating the spread against Big Ten squads Michigan State and Wisconsin, respectively.

The fifth-seeded Spartans held off the Catamounts 72-61 as 8 ½-point favorites. Vermont got within 62-53 after T.J. Sorrentine’s sixth and final three-pointer with 4:39 left but could not pull any closer.
However, the Catamounts did challenge the spread, cutting the lead to 10 with 73 seconds remaining. But then star Taylor Coppenrath came up small, missing three straight baskets with 30 seconds left to seal their ATS fate.

Bucknell just missed covering +8.5 against the sixth-seeded Badgers, losing 71-62. Alando Tucker hit 5 of 6 free throws for Badger backers in the final 24 seconds.

Top-seeded Duke also got a bit of a scare from ninth-seeded
Mississippi State, taking the lead back for good 57-54 on a big 3-point play by Shelden Williams with 4:19 left in the game. Williams again came up large by blocking Mississippi State’s Shane Power with 44 seconds left. Duke closed out the game by making four straight free throws in the last 38 seconds to at least give the smart bettors who were able to lay 8 points a push - making those laying 8.5 losers.

Free-throw shooting also played a huge factor for second-seeded
Oklahoma State, which was a perfect 8-for-8 in the final minute of an
85-77 win over seventh-seeded Southern Illinois. The Cowboys missed just four of their 33 free-throw attempts for the game and got 11-of-12 from Ivan McFarlin, who stepped up with a game-high 31 points overall to compensate for the limited play of star Joey Graham due to foul trouble.  Again the line you played determined how much cash you had in your pocket, with some favorite bettors able to win at -7.5 and some dog bettors winning at +8.5!

Playing the right numbers can make the difference between winning and losing.  Bodog is the fast growing sportsbook on the planet, open a Bodog account today and take the first step to playing better numbers.

Reading the right stuff pays! – Matty O’Shea, pregame.com
 

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