The first round of the NCAA basketball tournament is now complete and the second round is scheduled to conclude on Sunday March 22nd, with a couple of noteworthy match-ups.  Keep in mind, that you do not always have to pick the winner in college basketball: if you play the spread, picking a close loss by an underdog team can be good enough.  What you want to look for is match-ups where the underdog might win or at least 'hold their own.'
 
In the East Region, the top seeded Pittsburgh Panthers will play the Oklahoma State Cowboys, both coming off of first round victories on Friday.  Oklahoma won in dramatic fashion, scoring the winning bucket with less than ten seconds to go, while Pittsburgh won by a double digit margin.  However, Pittsburgh's win was unconvincing in one sense: they are the top seeded team in the East Region and they only beat the 16th seeded team from East Tennessee State University by ten points (ten and a half points below their predicted margin of victory).  Two of the other number one seeds in the March Madness tournament defeated their opponents by more than 40 points.
 
Pittsburgh hasn't been covering too many spreads lately.  Though being heavily favored to win, they gave a bad loss a little over a week ago to West Virginia in the quarterfinals of the Big East Conference tournament.  Not too long before that, they dropped a game to the Providence Friars, a team that didn't even make the national championship tournament. 
 
Since the Pittsburgh Panthers are not playing their best basketball right now, their game against Oklahoma State  could be a tighter match-up than the respective seeds of the two teams would suggest (Oklahoma State is an 8 seed).
 
Another tight game on Sunday, despite a significant difference in seeds, could take place between the University of Southern California and the Michigan State Spartans.  Southern California, the ten seed in the Midwest Region, had no problem getting past Boston College by posting an impressive 17 point victory, despite being a slight underdog.  While Michigan State had no trouble getting past their first round opponent, they did have trouble last week losing to Ohio State, a team that is comparable in talent to the Southern California squad.
 
When playing the spread, finding the underdogs that have a realistic chance of winning is the key: even if they fall short, you'll probably still be on the good side of the plus/minus.
 
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