Sweet 16 Betting Preview: 3 of 6 ACC Teams Sitting as Odds Favorites

Six teams from the ACC have made the Sweet 16 for the first time ever in the 2016 NCAA tournament. For the next round of the Big Dance, three of them opened as betting favorites and three as underdogs, according to sportsbooks monitored by Odds Shark, with two playing Thursday and four Friday.

Thursday’s Sweet 16 matchups tip off in the South Region, with the third-seeded Miami Hurricanes (27-7) facing the second-seeded Villanova Wildcats (31-5) at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Kentucky.

The Hurricanes are consensus 4.5-point underdogs versus the Wildcats, and the two teams have not met since 2004, when both schools resided in the old Big East. Villanova has won three of the past four meetings straight up and against the spread, according to the Odds Shark College Basketball Database.

The defending national champion Duke Blue Devils (25-10) are the other underdogs from the ACC playing in the West Region on Thursday. The fourth-seeded Blue Devils (+2.5) will take on the top-seeded Oregon Ducks (30-6) from the Pac-12 at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California.

Duke has won eight straight NCAA tournament games dating back to last season but has failed to cover the spread in six of its last seven this year.

On Friday, a pair of ACC teams will compete in both the East Region at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia and the Midwest Region at the United Center in Chicago.

The sixth-seeded Notre Dame Fighting Irish (23-11) will battle the seventh-seeded Wisconsin Badgers (22-12) in the early game, and the top-seeded North Carolina Tar Heels (30-6) will face the fifth-seeded Indiana Hoosiers (27-7) in the late game.

The Fighting Irish (-1.5) and Tar Heels (-6) are both favorites and could meet for a third time in the East Regional final with a berth in the Final Four on the line.

The top-seeded Virginia Cavaliers (28-7) would not mind a rematch with North Carolina in the Final Four, but they will need to get past the fourth-seeded Iowa State Cyclones (23-11) in the Midwest first.

The Cavaliers are listed as 5.5-point favorites against the Cyclones and lost the ACC tournament championship game to the Heels, who also fell 79-74 at Virginia on February 27.

The 10th-seeded Syracuse Orange (21-13) round out the ACC's representatives in the Midwest as 4.5-point underdogs taking on the 11th-seeded Gonzaga Bulldogs (28-7). The Orange crushed the Bulldogs 87-65 as 6.5-point chalk in the second round of the 2010 NCAA tournament, which is the only previous meeting between the schools.