March Madness Odds: Why Auburn Is Undervalued

The Auburn Tigers were awarded a No. 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament despite ranking in the top four in overall Adjusted Efficiency on KenPom.

Despite being under-seeded by the selection committee, the Tigers are still undervalued by the oddsmakers. That may be because they're in the same region as the No. 1 overall seed UConn Huskies and arguably the top No. 2 seed in the Iowa State Cyclones.

Our data analytics team, led by my colleague Sean Koerner, has developed an algorithm that projects every potential matchup and every single futures market for every team in the field this March Madness. The algorithm has identified an edge on Auburn for a futures bet.

Auburn's odds of advancing to the Elite Eight, according to our oddsmaker Sean Koerner, is roughly +222. Koerner gives the Tigers a 31.1% chance of making it to the Elite Eight.

That's relative to odds of +310 at FanDuel, which suggests FanDuel is giving Auburn a 24.39% edge on making the Final Four.

This discrepancy in outlooks represents a roughly 6.7% difference in positive expected value. Koerner routinely moves markets and is the standard-bearer for analytics in fantasy football and college basketball.

For this tournament, that 6.7% in +EV means that for every dollar you wager on this prop, you can expect to return 6.7 cents in value if you make similar bets over the long run.

By that same ilk, Koerner's odds on Auburn to get past the Midwest Region and make the Final Four have value. Auburn's odds of advancing to the Final Four are roughly +432 as Koerner gives the Tigers an 18.8% chance of making it to the Final Four.

That's relative to odds of +490 at FanDuel, which gives the Final Four bet about a 1.85% edge.