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Looking for bets on March Madness? Come check out three March Madness bets that you need to hammer for Thursday. Jon Conahan gives his three best bets for the day!
ANALYSIS

Bets on March Madness: Three Bets You Should Hammer on Thursday

The best time of the year is finally here as March Madness will kick off in less than an hour. I found three March Madness bets that I love for today. Let's dive right into this thing.

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March Madness Bets Today

March Madness Picks Today: Duke and UVA ML Parlay (-109) Bet $100 to collect $193) Get the best odds, available at DraftKings

It might sound crazy to some that I'm on both Virginia and Duke today. These have been two names that have come up multiple times throughout the past few days of potential upsets. However, I can't imagine a way that Virginia losses to Furman and Duke losses to Oral Roberts.

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There's always the possibility of Virginia not scoring the basketball just as we've seen throughout the past 10 years. However, I do think that people are overrating this Furman team just a bit. Furman does have a potent offense that can score against most teams in the country, but they haven't played a defensive team like Virginia at all this season. To me, this is one of those typical Virginia wins where they only give up 50 points and get out of there with an ugly 3-point win.

By their standards, Duke did have a somewhat disappointing season. Although that did end with them winning the ACC Tournament, Duke finished with a 26-8 record and didn't necessarily play well until the end of the season. Still, Duke isn't losing to Oral Roberts.

I get it, it's March, anything is possible.

If Duke losses to Oral Roberts I will be shocked. 

They've been playing their best basketball as of late and I expect that to continue.

March Madness Picks Today: West Virginia ML (-155) Bet $100 to collect $164) Get the best odds, available at DraftKings

West Virginia and Maryland might be the definition of average going up against average. I didn't think Maryland deserved to be in the tournament and when I saw they got an 8-seed, I knew it was time to fade them. This was arguably with the worst team in the country on the road this season as they finished 2-9 away from their home arena. Not only were they 2-9 in those games, but their offense was one of the worst in the nation. I'm not a huge fan of West Virginia and quite frankly, I don't trust them too much either. 

However, this is a game that I do expect West Virginia to win, Although Maryland might be the better team on paper and West Virginia didn't necessarily have a much better record on the road, I don't trust Maryland in this spot. I will eat the points because March gets weird but I fully expect Maryland to find a way to lose this game.

March Madness Picks Today: Arkansas ML (-135) Bet $100 to collect $174) Get the best odds, available at DraftKings

This March I'm going to be fading Big Ten teams whenever I get the chance and this is the perfect opportunity for me to do just that. Illinois, to me, is one of the more overrated teams in the country and again, I don't understand how they got the seed that they did.

Penn State beat them three times throughout the season, including in the Big Ten tournament, and they ended up with a higher seed than them somehow. We aren't here to get into all of that, but I was shocked to see Illinois get this type of respect.

I also think that Arkansas might be one of the most slept-on teams in the country. Coming into the season, people believed that this could be a team that does win a National Championship. 

While that picture might be out of the equation at this point, I do expect them to win this game.

They had an interesting regular season, finishing just 8-10 in the SEC. However, the SEC is much better than the Big 10 and when looking at some of the wins that Arkansas had this year, I fully expect them to find a way to get the job done. They beat teams like Missouri, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, Kentucky, and others throughout the regular season.

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Article Author

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An Editor and Analyst for OddsChecker, Jon Conahan has been covering all major sports since 2019. He is a 2022 graduate of the Bellisario School of Journalism at Penn State University and previously played D1 baseball.

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