As March approaches, it is time to begin preparation for one the biggest Michigan sports betting events of the year.
With the start of the NCAA Basketball Tournament just a few weeks away, BetMichigan.com utilized Google Trends to examine where the highest search volume for the terms “March Madness,” “College Basketball” and “NCAA Tournament” came from in the United States over the past 30 days.
Using this data, which was collected on Feb. 16, we were then able to determine the states with the most interest in the upcoming postseason.
Read below to see where Michigan ranked and what basketball fans in the state should be paying attention to as the season wraps up.
States With Most Interest in 2023 NCAA Tournament
Why State Couldn't Crack Top 10
As it stands, the Great Lakes State appears to be in for an unusually quiet NCAA Tournament, which likely led to the state coming in at No. 12 on our matrix. Safe to say we'd still expect heavy action on Michigan betting apps though.
Of the seven D1 programs in the state, Michigan State currently projects as the only one to make the field of 68 and they are only expected to receive an 8-seed according to the consensus of 108 bracketologists at Bracketmatrix.com.
While the Spartans should have little issue reaching their 25th consecutive tournament given they have more Quad 1 wins (six) than all but nine other teams, at 16-10 overall this is far from Tom Izzo’s finest team.
Malik Hall’s injury woes are partially to blame, but things have simply not clicked offensively as expected for them. At 75th nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency per KenPom.com, this season’s edition of the Spartans ranks lower in that category than all but one other Izzo coached team since data is available (back to 1996-97, his second season as head coach).
However, with Hall back now they add more floor spacing to their frontcourt, which is critical for a team that has hit 37% of their threes but just 47.8% of their twos (those figures rank 44th and 299th in the country respectively according to College Basketball Reference).
For Michigan State to make some noise in the tournament, they will need to continue their hot outside shooting, stay locked in defensively and hope for more of Izzo’s patented March magic.
Michigan On Wrong Side Of The Bubble
Over in Ann Arbor, it has been a frustrating season for the University of Michigan.
While the Wolverines are 9-7 in Big Ten play, poor performance in the non-conference portion of the schedule has left them at 15-12 overall and on the wrong side of the bubble for now. They sit in 65th place in the NET rankings and not a single bracket at Bracketmatrix includes them in the current projected field. Were they to miss out, it would be the first time since 2015 that they failed to make the NCAA Tournament.
However, Michigan still has an opportunity to play themselves into tournament consideration after their 84-72 win over Michigan State on Saturday. Their final four regular season games feature three Quad 1 contests on the road at Rutgers, Illinois and Indiana as well as a showdown at the Crisler Center versus fellow bubble team Wisconsin.
Although Michigan will only be favored to beat the Badgers at Caesars Sportsbook Michigan, were they to win three of these last four it will be much harder for the committee to ignore their body of work.
But as last year’s run to the Sweet 16 as an 11-seed entering the field at 17-14 showed, all they need for March success is a chance.
Best Of The Rest
Elsewhere, none of the state’s five mid-major squads are above .500, but there is one major storyline to monitor before the season concludes. University of Detroit Mercy guard Antoine Davis needs just 125 points to pass Pete Maravich to become the all-time leading scorer in D1 men’s basketball history, but has just three guaranteed games left in his college career.
While Davis already leads the nation with a season average of 27.9 points per game, he has stepped up his efforts lately, exploding for 35.2 ppg over his last six games and reaching at least 30 points in each of them. He will need to take that average up to 41.7 ppg or the Titans will have to advance beyond the first round of the Horizon League Tournament for him to break the record.
Nevertheless, Davis has flashed the ability to score at that level, going for 40 points or more in eight career games, four of them coming this year.
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