To parlay, or not to parlay

I managed to go 2-1 Friday on my first half bets. I lost with Kansas(-13)33, BU 29, but won with North Carolina(-9.5)53, Long Island 42, and Syracuse(-7)38, Indiana State 30. I caught a bit of UNC in the first half, and at the time it looked like I would lose that one as well. What I caught of the Syracuse game made me think they were firmly in control, but they barely covered. Kansas took over in the second half and won by 19, still shy of the 23 they were favored by.

Chad Millman's wiseguys recommended Washington(+3.5)over North Carolina, and this morning the line had moved to UW(+5), but I waited too long. Too bad. The Huskies lead at the half, 45-44.

I've parlayed the Purdue and Kansas moneylines, which pays a little worse than 1/2. Hopefully we don't get any surprises from Virginia Commonwealth or Illinois.

Today's wiseguy experts seem to like to quote alot of past history of what the various seeds have done in the past. I'm not crazy about this approach, since these may not indicate anything useful for today's games. After all, how much did we hear about how badly the selection committee seeded the tournament? I suspect you can trust the stats about one seeds beating up on eights and nines. Beyond that, I don't know that two-seeds being 23-16 vs. 10-seeds indicates much about Notre Dame(-5) vs. Florida State.

On the other hand, Florida State's win over Texas A&M was low scoring enough that I'm tempted to take UNDER 130 for ND v FSU. I also like the idea of parlaying Florida State and the under, but while this makes sense, these bets never seem to work out for me. That's why I'm taking Florida State(+5)over Notre Dame, and FSU-ND UNDER 130 instead. No parlay, just two seperate bets instead. If Notre Dame is as overachieving and underathletic as I keep hearing, they should be ripe fruit for an athletic, defense-minded team like Florida State.