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The Kansas State Wildcats had to sweat it out, but they are back in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in three seasons. Kansas State finished at just 20-13 but due to the strength of the Big 12, got into the Big Dance. They will now face another team that is back in March Madness for the first time in a few seasons, the Wake Forest Demon Deacons. Wake Forest posted a winning record for the first time in three seasons under Danny Manning and like Kansas State, finished with a mediocre record but got into the tourney by virtue of the strength of its conference.... 

The New Orleans Privateers are in March Madness for the first time in over 20 years. After winning the Southland Conference during the regular season, New Orleans squeaked past Texas A&M Corpus Christi to get the conference’s automatic bid but has to travel to Dayton before a potential matchup with the NCAA Tournament’s No. 1 overall seed Villanova. Their opponent will be the Mount Saint Mary’s Mountaineers, a team that has made four trips to the Big Dance, but is still looking for its first win.Don’t miss the hardwood action from the UD Arena at 6:40 p.m. ET on Tuesday, March 14, 2017. Catch every moment of the game live on truTV. We will have NCAA basketball odds at BookMaker.eu available for this and every other First Four college basketball matchup.... 

The North Carolina Central Eagles have to feel a little jobbed going to Dayton. They finished the season at 25-8 and won the MEAC in the regular season comfortably and cruised to wins in the conference tournament as well. North Carolina Central even managed to beat a major conference team on the road, knocking off Missouri by 10 in Columbia earlier this year. A date against Kansas in Kansas City awaits them if they can knock off the UC Davis Aggies in Ohio.... 

It was a bit of a surprise when the Arizona Wildcats didn’t get a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Arizona finished 30-4 and won both the Pac-12 regular season title and conference tournament, but the Wildcats can’t complain too much about staying West and being the No. 2 seed. Their fans will surely make the trek north to see their beloved Wildcats take on the North Dakota Fighting Hawks in the last game of the evening on Thursday.This war on the floor will go down Thursday, March 16, 2017 at 9:50 p.m. ET at Vivint Smart Home Arena in Salt Lake City. The game will be televised live on TBS. We will have NCAA basketball odds at BookMaker.eu available for this and every other NCAA Tournament matchup.... 

For the first time ever, the Northwestern Wildcats are finally a part of March Madness. On Selection Sunday, Evanston exploded with joy as the Wildcats were selected to head to the NCAA Tournament and the committee even showed them respect with an 8-seed. They will be facing another school known more for its academics than its athletics on Thursday, when they take on the Vanderbilt Commodores. Three wins over Florida did the trick for Vanderbilt, but many were surprised to see just how ‘in’ this team was with a record of 19-15.... 

No longer can the Gonzaga Bulldogs be considered a mid-major. Gonzaga has made the NCAA Tournament in all 18 seasons that Mark Few has been in Spokane, but this team might be the best one yet. However, for all their success, they still have yet to make a Final Four and that is something that Few will be looking to change. Their first test will be against the South Dakota State Jackrabbits, the winners of the Summit League.This war on the floor will go down Thursday, March 16, 2017 at 2 p.m. ET at Vivint Smart Home Arena in Salt Lake City. The game will be televised live on TBS. We will have NCAA basketball odds at BookMaker.eu available for this and every other NCAA Tournament matchup.... 

The NCAA Tournament Committee must have really enjoyed the first-round matchup between the Providence Friars and the USC Trojans last season because they pitted the two sides against each other again in the final First Four game this year. It was somewhat surprising to see Providence here after the Friars finished tied for third in a tough Big East, but perhaps even more surprising that USC got in the tournament in the first place. The winner of this one will face Cincinnati in Sacramento on St. Patrick’s Day.... 

A sign of disrespect is that the Mountain West regular season and tournament champion Nevada Wolf Pack were given a No. 12 seed and will face the Big 12 champion Iowa State Cyclones in the first round of the NCAA’s. That’s just fine with the Pack, however, who will be making their first trip to the Big Dance since 2007. And they could be the hottest team entering the tournament with nine consecutive victories while covering the spread in every one of them.... 

Here’s a quick NCAA Tournament quiz for our readers. Can you name the team with the longest winning streak entering the tournament? We have to eliminate teams that lost in their conference tournament, so Kansas, North Carolina and UCLA are out. You still have Kentucky and Gonzaga to pick from, but you’d be wrong. The correct answer is the Vermont Catamounts, whose 21-game run is 10 longer than Kentucky’s. Vermont enters the Big Dance as a 13-seed and looks to extend its streak against the Purdue Boilermakers.... 

Virginia Tech had an inferior overall record this season but played in the ultra-tough ACC, which is why it got a favorable seed in March Madness. However, the oddsmakers clearly believe their Big Ten foe is going to emerge from this one victorious.Wisconsin has an elite defense and will aim to shut down Virginia Tech to move on.... 

It’s been quite a season for the Minnesota Golden Gophers, who enter the NCAA Tournament as a No. 5 seed in the South Region after winning a total of eight games last season. The Pitino coaching tree apparently has deep roots as son Richard earned Big Ten Coach of the Year honors and joined dad Rick as the only son/father combo to coach in the same NCAA Tournament. The Gophers open with a tough Middle Tennessee State Blue Raiders squad, which pulled off an upset as a No. 15 seed in last year’s NCAA Tournament.... 

Bucknell has pulled off a pair of first-round upsets in program history, but this will be a tall task. West Virginia uses a full-court press which can confound foes and it will help make it a heavy favorite in this matchup.The Mountaineers have designs of making a deep run in March Madness, and the first round shouldn’t give them too much trouble. Bucknell will need to play nearly perfectly in order to have a chance to pull off this upset.... 

Notre Dame made it to the championship game of the conference tournament before falling to Duke, showing its offensive prowess in the contest. Princeton rolled to the Ivy League championship and hasn’t lost a game in months.However, this is a big step up in competition and the Tigers will be underdogs, although the spread is close enough that an upset isn’t out of the question.... 

The brackets have just been announced. It’s time to start crunching numbers to weed out some March Madness winners on the futures odds! The Duke Blue Devils, North Carolina Tar Heels, Villanova Wildcats, and Kansas Jayhawks are all lined as favorites to cut the nets down in early April. The return on investment isn’t the greatest with each ranked No. 1 seeds, but top seeds often make it to the Final Four as well as the title game. Sometimes they don’t however, so let’s break down the field and look for some safe bets and lottery tickets that just might win it all.... 

The scrappy team from Fort Myers is hoping that Dunk City is back in the Sunshine State as the No.14 seeded Florida Gulf Coast Eagles will look to bring the high-flying antics that brought them national fame in 2013 back to prominence as they get set to take on the No. 3 seed Florida State Seminoles on Thursday in Orlando. Can this FGCU team go on another improbably run?... 

The stars align on Thursday to bring us Melo Trimble against Trevon Blueitt in the third game on the slate in Orlando. With the Maryland Terrapins going against the Xavier Musketeers in an evening tip-off we’ll get to see a surprisingly evenly matched 6-11 game that could be one of the more exciting contests of the first day, particularly if the two stars end up taking over the game for their respective teams.... 

Many are proclaiming the West Region to be a breeze for the team’s seeded in the upper half of the rankings. By now, we all know what happens when the betting public voice their opinions on a weak bracket or a team that shouldn’t have made it… right? This only means the West is going to be littered with upsets and games that go down to the wire. Taking that mentality, let’s break the bracket down and see if we can’t come up with some viable options to win it on the futures odds.... 

The Florida Gators have secured a No. 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament and will be pinned against the No. 13 seed East Tennessee State Buccaneers in the Round of 64. Florida faltered in the SEC Tournament, losing their second game in a week to Vanderbilt, but Florida still managed to grab a high seed in their return to the Big Dance following a two year hiatus. For East Tennessee State, this is their first time in the tourney since 2010 when they were a No. 16 seed.... 

Both head south for the action, the No. 5 seed Virginia Cavaliers and No. 12 seeded UNC-Wilmington Seahawks will meet up on the first day of the Round-of-64 action. Virginia will try and advance further than they did a year ago, making it all the way to the Elite Eight, but the Seahawks are no slouches. This team thrives on forcing turnovers and could be pesky matchup and we all know to be weary of the 5-12 matchups.... 

With the North Carolina Tar Heels getting to pretty much play in their own backyard through the first weekend of the Big Dance, you can pretty much pencil them into the Sweet 16. After that, it gets much tougher to decipher the South Region with a number of team’s making appearances for the first time in years, and others making their very first in program history. All kinds of young talent is littered throughout this bracket, so it will no doubt be up for grabs should Roy’s boys fail to live up their top billing.... 

The Midwest Region is loaded with a number of teams I already took positions on to win the NCAA tournament. Unfortunately for me, I’m going to need to do some immediate hedging with this region loaded with a number of heavyweights as well as teams that have it in them to spring an upset or two. This and the West region have five teams listed at less than 10-1 to win the bracket, and is the only to have another six teams at 33-1 or lower. A tip of the cap to whomever picks the last four teams standing in this region!... 

Of the four regions announced on Selection Sunday, the East looks to be the most loaded by far. The top seeded Villanova Wildcats have the longest odds of the four No. 1 seeds to win it, which shows just how stacked this region truly is. When the dust clears, someone’s going to come out of the East, so let’s dig into the numbers and see which teams should be considered and which should be thrown to the wayside.... 

Winthrop sounds more like an Ivy League preppie than the powerhouse hoops program from the Big South Conference. And that’s probably why the Winthrop Eagles don’t get much love come tournament time. Back to back national title game appearances put the Butler Bulldogs on the map, but they’ve been unable to replicate that postseason success from six years ago. Now, the Bulldogs don’t want to become a footnote on the Eagles’ run to national prominence.... 

With the win over UCF on Friday, the SMU Mustangs have now won 15 straight games, their last loss coming in January against the same Cincinnati Bearcats they’ll compete against in the American Athletic Conference Tournament Finals on Sunday. It’s truly not that often that the two teams that are the best in any given tournament end up going head-to-head in the finals, but that’s just what we have here in the AAC Tournament.... 

While the Semifinals featured the Yale versus Harvard showdown that draws the attention of everybody when they shift their eyes to the Ivy League, the first every Ivy League Conference finals will feature the Yale Bulldogs against the top seeded Princeton Tigers with the NCAA automatic bid on the line. Princeton has been playing amazing basketball all season long and hasn’t lost a game since December. Can Yale be the first conference team to beat the Tigers this year here in their third meeting?...