March Madness First Four Best Bets (3/19/25)

Author: Dylan Lieck | March 19, 2025 | 4:44 P.M. CST

Best Bets:

We’re going to break this into two wagers here. We’re going to take Texas +2.5 and Tre Johnson (TEX) Over 19.5 points. Here’s the breakdown of why we’re going to split it into two smaller plays.

Let’s start with Texas. This is quite an inconsistent team; I would know as I’ve watched them play 15+ times this season, and I will admit it can be quite difficult to know what Texas team we are going to see. On the one hand, they have a lot of talent on their roster with a top 3-5 pick in this years NBA draft in Tre Johnson. They also have some solid transfers in Tramon Mark, Arthur Kaluma, & Jordan Pope. Tramon Mark has been especially important as of late. For some reason, Rodney Terry had Mark playing limited minutes for an extended stretch of SEC play. With Mark in the game, the Horns offense has especially improved, as they have averaged over 81 PPG in their last 10 games, most of which includes Mark playing increased minutes (prior to that stretch). Additionally, while I’m not a big Chendell Weaver fan, I will say since the Horns got him back they’ve looked a touch better defensively, and he’s brought a spark off the bench that the Horns had been lacking. Even if you just look at the two wins they had in the SEC tournament (which had Mark playing a lot, and Weaver in the rotation), the Horns outperformed what they did in the regular season in those same matchups. They got beat at Vandy by 8 earlier in the year, but in the SEC tournament they dominated the game from start to finish, leading by as many as 20 in the game. They followed that up knocking off Texas A&M. They split with A&M in the regular season, the first game they were absolutely embarrassed by 20. They won the second game at home by 1, however they trailed by as many as 20 in that game, and were largely outplayed for 35 minutes. They got hot in the second half and had a couple of very fortunate bounces. In the SEC tournament, they LED for the majority of the game with A&M. Even against Tennessee they were able to hang for about 25-30 minutes, before the wheels came off. And also, keep in mind that’s a Tennessee team who took down Auburn the next round. Lastly, the Horns have been battle tested all year. They went 7-10 in Quad 1 games, with wins at Oklahoma and Mississippi State, as well as over Kentucky, Missouri, OU, Vandy, & two over A&M. Xavier on the other hand, playing in a much weaker conference, has been abysmal when stepping up in class. They are a putrid 1-9 vs Quad 1 teams this season. Every single time they stepped up, they got knocked back down.

Now, Xavier is a team that did play well down the stretch, winning 7 in a row before losing in the Big East quarterfinals to Marquette. However, when you look at that stretch of wins, just one of those 7 victories came over teams in the field of 68. That stretch included wins over Depaul, Seton Hall, Creighton, Butler twice, & Providence twice. Providence, who was not good to begin with, also played both those games without their leading scorer, Bryce Hopkins. The lone win over a tournament team was over Creighton at home. And, while they played very well in that game, it still was not a Quad 1 game, as Creighton is outside the top 30 in the NET (38th). They are just a 9-seed in the NCAA Tournament. So, while Xavier might have a better record in that stretch, I’d actually argue that Texas is playing better basketball.

The one thing that concerns me about this game, and the reason I did not make this a BIG 3-4 unit play, is because of one guy: Rodney Terry. He’s one of the worst coaches in the country; he’s probably THE WORST coach at the P5 level. Texas, despite the talent, runs almost NO action to help put their guys in positions to be successful offensively. Essentially, their entire offense is purely 1-on-1 isolations, and pick & roll. Luckily for Terry, Tre Johnson is arguably the best 1v1 player in the entire country. And, Tramon Mark is elite getting downhill 1v1, and that can lead to easy buckets at the rim & sprayed out threes to shooters (which Texas does have). Lastly, though, this is just a pure numbers issue. I made Texas -1.78 in this game. The line for much of the week was +3.5. While I wish I had released this earlier and jumped on Texas at that number, still sitting 2.5 is a very large discrepancy this late in the season, even going through zero. Now, I do a few things unconventionally with my power rankings in terms of game-to-game adjustments (due to the smaller sample sizes we now have in college athletics with all the transfers each year). However, I’ve looked at 4 other groups power numbers, and every single one of them made this a pick'em or had Texas favored. So regardless of who you trust numbers wise, this number is absolutely off. I also would venture to guess that while we did see Xavier money early, the limits opening up and seeing this move back to 2.5 would indicate that 3.5 was too high. I don’t think the public moved this back a full point that early in the day. Regardless, Texas sits +130 right now, which gives them a 43.5% implied probability to win this game. Even if you want to use conservative estimates and say Texas is 50% to win this game, you’re catching a 6.5% edge. We’re going to take the +2.5 instead of the ML, but both are Plus EV plays.

The second part of this is Tre Johnson over 19.5 points (-108). Look, I understand the value in taking prop unders in bigger markets, such as the Super Bowl, the NFL as a whole, and SOMETIMES the NBA if the market gets inflated. However, the college basketball prop market is not something that is widely used and beat up. Because of that, you can often find good spots to back guys. And that’s exactly what this is. So, Tre Johnson is coming into this game averaging 19.8 PPG on the season. As I mentioned, the number we need to go over is 19.5. While he’s only done that in 14 of 31 games this season, he’s done it 6 of his last 10 games. He’s 10-9 to that over since January 11th, however, he’s 6-4 to that over in losses. The reason I mention that is, often times when Texas gets down, they turn to him and let him go 1v1. It would shock me if Texas lost this game by more than 3 AND Tre didn’t get to 20. I think there’s a good chance they win the game AND he gets to 20, but I actually think taking his over is a bit of insurance if Texas doesn’t play well as a group here.

I also want to mention that Texas got 4 days rest. Since January (SEC play essentially), when Texas is coming off 3 or more days of rest, Tre Johnson scored 20 or more 7 of 10 outings, averaging 24.5 PPG in those 10 games. Of the 3 he did not go over 20, he scored less than 16 points only ONCE (7 against OU in his worst shooting performance of the season). So, clearly there is some correlation between fresh legs and how he performs. There’s never a lack of confidence from this kid. It usually has to do with being overworked. His usage rate can be too high at times, and that can lead to progressive fatigue, especially in a conference like the Big East.

Lastly, let’s look at Xavier’s Defense. They are 44th in the country in defensive efficiency (nowhere near elite or even very good). But more than that, I went back and looked at how they performed against opponents top scorers in the recent past, and boy was it ugly. Over their last 12 games, every single game the opponent’s leading scorer exceeded their season average against Xavier. Additionally, 10 of those 12 games the leading scorer went for AT LEAST 20 points. They have been absolutely TORCHED by the opposing team’s best players, specifically when they have been guards. Now Ryan Kalkbrenner (big for Creighton) torched them as well, but the other 10 top scorers were all guards.

Thus, we are going to split this into two one star plays, and back Texas +2.5 and Tre Johnson over 19.5 points in this one. The odds of us losing both are very low, and there is a high chance we cash both.

Official Picks: Texas +2.5 (-110) | Tre Johnson OVER 19.5 Points (-108)

Play Rating: 1-Star