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The Odds and Trends for Florida vs. Houston in the National Championship
By Joe Tansey
Published:
Monday’s National Championship feels like a toss-up.
When you look at the odds, it’s damn near close to that point.
Florida is a 1.5-point favorite over Houston, but the number on the money line dropped a bit from the opening on Saturday night.
The Gators have 61 percent of the bets and 53 percent of the handle at BetMGM, where you can bet the National Championship with an odds boost token. There are good promos to use for both Pennsylvania sports betting and New Jersey sports betting apps.
Both teams played some elite basketball to get to this point.
Florida is 35-4 and only has two defeats since February 1st, while Houston is also 35-4 with a single loss since December 1st.
The one big difference between the Gators and Cougars is that Florida has been the much better team against the spread.
Florida boasts a 28-11 ATS record, but is only 2-3 ATS in the NCAA tournament.
However, the Gators are 3-0 ATS as a favorite of three points or less. Those covers came against Auburn, Tennessee, and Alabama. Not too shabby!
Houston is 3-2 ATS in the Big Dance and cashed outright as a 4.5-point underdog against Duke. By the way, it’s a real shame Duke suffered one of the historic Final Four comebacks ever. Real, real shame.
Houston has been an underdog just twice this season. It won both of those games with incredible comebacks. The other underdog cash came at Allen Fieldhouse on January 25th in an overtime win over Kansas.
It’s hard to find significant trends for the over/under of 140.5. It’s too high for a typical Houston game, but too low for a typical Florida contest.
Houston is known for its tremendous defense, but is 3-1 to the over when the total closed at 140 points or higher.
On the other end, Florida is 5-3 to the over in games where the total closed below 150 points.
The last three National Championship games had 141 points or less. The last two were in the mid 130s.
The last natty in the Alamodome, which was Villanova’s second win in 2018, featured 141 points. Nova beat Michigan by 15.
There have been four National Championships previously played at the Alamodome and only one winner got over 80 points. UConn in 2004 is the trivia answer.
While Florida is known for its scoring, I would look to the under, which you can use FanDuel’s profit boost on.
If you think points are on the menu, bet365 has a super boost for both teams to score 30 points in the first half. Bet365 also has a Safety Net bet of $10 for Same Game Parlays on the game.
Joe Tansey writes sports betting posts for Crossing Broad and also covers the Philadelphia Union for his Substack site, Union Soccer Blog.