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The Pennsylvania Quakers winning against the Kansas Jayhawks would pay $85 for every $10 bet. They would pay $200,000 for every $100 bet with a Championship win. Penn is being called the "best 16 seed in tournament history".
FiveThirtyEight.com explains just how good a team this Quakers squad is to be called a 16 seed.
For starters, Penn is a lot better than the usual No. 16 seed. According to our Elo ratings — which measure a team’s strength based on (among other factors) who it’s beaten and by how much — the Quakers rank 76th in the country, with an even 1700 rating. How good is that? By definition, the typical D-I team rates around 1500, and since they first became a thing in 1985 (excluding this season), No. 16 seeds have had an average Elo rating of 1483.1 Before Penn this year, the highest-rated No. 16 seed of all time was Portland State, which carried a 1698 rating heading into the 2008 tournament. (It ended up losing, to Kansas of all teams, by 24.) Penn is officially the first No. 16 seed ever to break the 1700 barrier in Elo.
Of course they will have to take on a Kansas team some have pegged to win the Championship.
Pennsylvania is a +14 underdog against the Jayhawks in Round One.
- Dan Shapiro, Gambling911.com
