Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

  William Hill sports book was doing a promo for new customers. Get a "free" bet of up to $300. If you lose the bet, you get your bet back in site credit. This means you have to "bet through" that amount. So, if you lose the $300 bet, you have to make 15 separate bets of $20 each before you can close your account. I went 50/50 with a friend of mine and we chose a 4 point underdog to win outright at +165. They ended up winning an incredibly stress-filled game and we won $495. It was a great win for us.

Today is the last day of the college basketball regular season. Quite a few games were cancelled because of COVID-19. Usually at the end of the regular season there are a bunch of 20-win teams. This year there are 20 out of 357 NCAA division 1 teams.  Illinois had a great regular season. 20 wins, 6 losses. Second place in the Big Ten conference. It looks like they will earn a top seed in the upcoming NCAA tournament (the bracket is announced one week from today). They are 1 of 4 teams to be ranked in the top 10 nationally in both offensive and defensive efficiency - Gonzaga, Michigan, and Houston are the other 3. That metric is normally a sign of a national championship - 10 of the last 12 national champions have ranked in the top 7 in offense and all have been ranked in the top 20 in defense. Illinois, Michigan, and Gonzaga are the only 3 teams that fit into that group this year.  Since there was no NCAA tournament last year, people are little more excited than usual for Marc...