The Sweet 16 stage of the 2019 Men’s College Basketball Tournament is upon us. The expected No. 1 seeds may have made it to this important round, but the competition is about to get a lot tougher for them all. It would be a small miracle for a bracket to remain perfect at this point despite the lack of surprises compared to previous years, but the excitement is still there and bettor interest in the tournament is at a fever pitch, with upsets all but inevitable moving into the eventual Elite Eight. In order to help you make more educated picks, we’ve curated the Sweet 16 predictions from key NCAA Division 1 experts.
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Expert Picks and Predictions for the Sweet 16 Stage of the 2019 NCAA College Basketball March Madness Tournament
FiveThirty-Eight
FiveThirty-Eight is the class math wizard is to ESPN’s jock. And it shows in their seemingly advanced model that tries to distill each of the 16 surviving teams’ chances of advancing to the next round. It might not be a shock to all that the Duke Blue Devils own the best odds at 75 percent. That’s despite a close call in the second round against the UCF Knights in which the Blue Devils’ poise was tested to the hilt. It’s also worth noting here that Duke will be up against the Virginia Tech Hokies in the Sweet 16 – the same team that beat them in the regular season. Duke, however, didn’t have Zion Williamson then, so that game is arguably a moot point heading into the rematch. Meanwhile, according to same model, fans should expect tight games between the Texas Tech Red Raiders and the Michigan Wolverines, the Purdue Boilermakers and the Tennessee Volunteers, and the Houston Cougars and the Kentucky Wildcats.
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Sports Illustrated
Over at Sports Illustrated, the respected media outfit re-polled 10 of its experts and asked them how the rest of the tournament will unfold. Again, the Blue Devils emerged as a top pick, receiving a unanimous vote from all writers. If anything, this can be used by the Hokies as a form of motivation. Virginia also received a unanimous selection, and for a very obvious reason: the Cavs are a No. 1 seed facing the lowest-seed team that made it to the Sweet 16 – the No. 12 Oregon Ducks.
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Sporting News (AccuScore)
Like FiveThirty-Eight, Sporting News used a borrowed model from AccuScore to sum up the most possible outcome of the Sweet 16 round. Per Sporting News:
“AccuScore has simulated all possible matchups thousands of times and come up with probabilities for each remaining team to proceed to the next round, as well each of the successive rounds after the Sweet 16.”
There aren’t much surprises here either, as Virginia, Gonzaga, and Duke are the most favored. North Carolina could be in danger, though, as it only has a slim advantage over the SEC tournament champions, Auburn Tigers.
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TopBet (Ryan Simpson)
View TopBet resident expert Ryan Simpson’s 2019 March Madness Sweet 16 Picks and Predictions
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