Jimmy Boyd in 
Nearly the entire country will be focusing on picking a perfect bracket this week. It’s reported that 40 million Americans participate in March Madness by entering some kind of tournament bracket contest.
However, some people like to do their college basketball betting on the games or at least the NCAA basketball championship odds. The NCAA Tournament brings a lot of gamblers to the window and they bet a reported $10.4 billion. So, I thought I’d turn the spotlight to seeds and how they have played out against the spread over the last 11 NCAA tourneys.
NCAA Tournament ATS Results by Seed
Below are the ATS records for each seed throughout the tournament. We used to break this down by round, however, there are a few reasons why we’ve decided to stop providing this information.
The first reason we are no longer breaking out seed ATS results by round is that the majority of the results end up having a small sample size. Even with top seeds advancing almost every year, the increasingly small number of games we are looking at in each round makes the results virtually useless.
The other reason is simply that we do not find the data useful. Sometimes the results that research yields are to ignore the initial premise – in this case, does seeding have any significant impact on ATS results? The resounding answer to that question is, “no”, at least not at any level where you would expect it to repeat season after season.
If you want just straight-up winners, check out our seed history to see how often teams advance in each spot.
Overall
| Seed | Wins | Losses | Pushes | Win % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 142 | 138 | 4 | 50.71% |
| 2 | 96 | 115 | 9 | 45.50% |
| 3 | 96 | 96 | 3 | 50.00% |
| 4 | 81 | 88 | 3 | 47.93% |
| 5 | 69 | 71 | 2 | 49.29% |
| 6 | 53 | 63 | 3 | 45.69% |
| 7 | 71 | 60 | 3 | 54.20% |
| 8 | 57 | 55 | 5 | 50.89% |
| 9 | 53 | 51 | 5 | 50.96% |
| 10 | 50 | 53 | 2 | 48.54% |
| 11 | 88 | 66 | 2 | 57.14% |
| 12 | 62 | 49 | 2 | 55.86% |
| 13 | 41 | 46 | 1 | 47.13% |
| 14 | 32 | 47 | 0 | 40.51% |
| 15 | 41 | 34 | 3 | 54.67% |
| 16 | 63 | 63 | 3 | 50.00% |
Would I blindly use this information to try and beat the tournament spreads? Probably not. But, it does give you something to look at. Two seeds tend to be overvalued. People think the 7/10 matchup is a toss-up, but in reality, it looks like the better teams usually come through.
If you like this kind of statistical analysis you might also enjoy our ATS records for each point spread.
