With public backing Florida, sportsbooks pull for Houston

Duke’s dramatic exit from the NCAA Tournament was a big win for most sportsbooks, and they can cap March Madness with another big win if Houston can upset Florida in Monday night’s championship game.

Florida was a consensus 1.0-point favorite by mid-day Monday, but the Gators have been the top two most-backed teams to win the title since the tournament began. The other? That was Duke, which bowed out after losing a 14-point lead against Houston on Saturday night.

The Gators opened as a 1.5-point favorite against the Cougars at many sportsbooks. That includes BetMGM, where Florida has been backed by 61 percent of the spread-line bets and 53 percent of the money. Meanwhile, BetRivers reported on Monday that 60 and 58 percent of the spread-line action, respectively, has supported the Gators.

Florida opened at +4000 at BetMGM to win the national championship. Those odds had shrunk to +325 before the tournament began and sat at -115 on Monday. By comparison, Houston has seen its odds shrink from +1400 to +600 ahead of the tournament and to -105 the day of the title game.

BetMGM has taken a $100,000 bet on Florida at +900 to win the title, with the largest bet backing Houston a $50,000 wager at +600. BetRivers took a $700 futures wager on Florida at +5000 that would pay out $35,000 with a Gators victory on Monday night.

“Duke losing in the Final Four was a great result for BetMGM. The sportsbook is cheering for Houston to upset Florida in the championship game,” BetMGM trading manager Seamus Magee said.

PROP PICKS

–Walter Clayton Over 19.5 Points (-140 at BetMGM): Coming off a 34-point game in the Gators’ Final Four win over Auburn and with Duke’s Cooper Flagg out of the picture, Clayton is now the +100 favorite to win the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player award. The senior also poured in 30 against Texas Tech in the Elite Eight after averaging 19.7 points through Florida’s first three tournament games.

–Over 140.5 Total Points (-105 at BetRivers): Florida has averaged 84.4 points per game during the tournament in running its streak of games with at least 77 points to 18, and each of the Gators’ past eight NCAA Tournament games have produced at least 145 points, according to the book. Houston hasn’t been as high scoring, averaging 72 points during its run to the title game, but the Cougars did manage to produce 70 points against Duke’s lengthy defense.

KEY STAT

The Gators have won the first half in 15 of their past 18 non-conference games.

THE NEWS

Houston (35-4), which has won 18 straight, has designs on making 69-year-old Kelvin Sampson the oldest coach to win an NCAA championship. Sampson is the architect of the Cougars’ system focused on defense, rebounding and toughness, though this year’s group also leads the nation in 3-point shooting (39.9 percent) thanks to guards LJ Cryer, Emanuel Sharp (12.8 ppg) and Milos Uzan (11.5 ppg).

“Last night, I got so many texts,” Sampson said on Sunday. “I saw Tubby (Smith) and Rick Barnes, Tom Izzo, (Gregg Popovich), a bunch of the older coaches. They all kind of had similar messages to me: Win one for the old guys, something like that.”

To do so, Houston and its national-best defense will have to solve an athletic and analytic juggernaut developed by one of Division I’s youngest head coaches, 39-year-old Todd Golden.

The Gators (35-4) feature not only the third-most efficient offense in the KenPom era — averaging 128.8 points per 100 possessions, just shy of Duke’s 130.0 rating — but they also boast the NCAA Tournament’s hottest player in senior point guard Walter Clayton Jr.

When Florida needed to rally from 10 points down to Texas Tech with five minutes to play in the West Region final on March 29, Clayton reeled off 13 of his game-high 30 points. When Florida needed to come back from eight points down to Auburn in Saturday’s semifinal, the first-team All-American poured in 20 of his career-high 34.

“Having someone’s that such an elite threat to score with the ball in his hands at all times,” Golden said, “obviously makes everybody else so dangerous as well.”

Auburn rarely figured out a way to get the ball out of Clayton’s hands during crunch time. He produced a crucial 3-pointer and a three-point play down the stretch when the Tigers got as close as one point.

With that in mind, Golden expects Houston’s group of agile and physical defenders — even big men J’Wan Roberts and Joseph Tugler have the ability to stay with guards — to double Clayton and make him give up the ball.

“Their defense worries me a lot, absolutely,” Golden said with a laugh. “You look at a guy like Tugler, Roberts, they have incredible length and athleticism and physicality inside the paint. They wear you down, make it really, really hard on you.”

If Clayton (18.5 ppg, 4.1 apg) can’t put up 18 shots like he did Saturday, then he’ll move the ball to senior guards Alijah Martin (14.6 ppg) and Will Richard (13.2 ppg) and big men Alex Condon (10.5 ppg) and Thomas Haugh (9.9 ppg).

Florida, which has won 11 in a row, has returned to the NCAA championship game for the first time since Billy Donovan’s Gators won back-to-back crowns in 2006-07. The sportsbooks favor Florida by 1 or 1.5 points while the predictive analytics (such as KenPom) suggest Houston should win by 1.

In other words, this one has all the earmarks of turning into the first NCAA title game that comes down to the last shot since Virginia and Texas Tech needed overtime to settle the 2019 championship.

“Big-picture goal is going to make them take tough twos, (then) fight like hell to get the rebound,” Golden said. “Every rebound we get is going to feel like we won the game, I feel like. If we can do a good job of keeping them off the boards, we’ll give ourselves a chance.”

THEY SAID IT

“I’m sure (Olajuwon) poured his heart and soul into this program, just like a lot of the guys that came before us. We’re standing on those guys’ shoulders, everyone who came before us. It would mean a lot to get this done. Not only for us, but for them.” –Cryer

–Field Level Media