What if you used odds from Vegas sports books to fill out an NCAA Tournament bracket?

By Case Keefer (contact)

Thursday, March 29, 2012 | 2:15 p.m.

Fans come up with an endless amount of strategies to fill out their brackets every year before the NCAA Tournament.

Gimmicks for those who don’t follow college basketball closely include picking teams based on their team colors or mascot. Another popular, and slightly more advisable, method is copying the exact picks of ESPN analysts such as Jay Bilas or Dick Vitale.

But what about filling out a bracket based entirely on which team Las Vegas sports books would post as a favorite in any given matchup at the beginning of the tournament? It would take only a few more minutes of research than the approaches described above.

And, at least this year, it would have resulted in a far more positive result.

Using the default scoring settings from Yahoo.com’s tournament bracket contest — one point for a round of 64 win, two points for round of 32, four points for the Sweet 16 and eight points for the Elite Eight — Las Vegas sports books would have posted a score of 88 points thus far.

That would register in the 95th percentile out of the millions who submitted brackets this year. Louisville is the only team left in the field that oddsmakers didn’t favor in every one of its NCAA Tournament games.

The No. 4 seed Cardinals were 4.5-point underdogs to Michigan State and 1.5-point underdogs to Florida.

The national championship matchup a hypothetical Las Vegas bracket would have come up with, No. 1 seed Kentucky vs. No. 2 seed Ohio State, is two games away from happening.

Of course, there are downsides to going with a bracket based entirely on Vegas favorites. Practically no higher-seeded teams would get out of the first round and no seeds other than a No. 1 or No. 2 would ever reach the Final Four.

The bracket would, in essence, rob some of the charm associated with March Madness. Producing a positive result is also far from a guarantee.

Take last year’s tournament — when the Final Four was made up of No. 11 seed Virginia Commonwealth, No. 8 seed Butler, No. 4 seed Kentucky and No. 3 seed Connecticut — as an example for the dangers of choosing all favorites.

But it’s worth thinking about as an option following Selection Sunday at this time next year. Picking teams based on their Vegas expectation can’t be any worse than siding with Louisville because it wears jerseys with an attractive shade of red.

Case Keefer can be reached at 948-2790 or [email protected]. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.