The tournament is still more than two weeks away, but it is an incredibly overwhelming event as a sports bettor. There are so many games, and so many ‘experts’ with opinions and insights to offer, that at a bettor can make bade decisions if they haven’t done their work to get ready well in advance. If you wait until the Wednesday before the first games are played you won’t have the time to do the handicapping required, and you won’t do as well as you should. Like the teams that are heading to the tournament, you need to go into tournament training if you want to be at your best for the big event. Here are eight things you can do to get ready to cash in on March Madness:

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Cornell is the first team to guarantee themselves a trip to the tournament, so they deserve a profile. The Big Red make it into the field as Ivy League champions because that elite conference is apparently too good for a conference tournament. This is the first time since 1988 that Cornell has won the league, and only the seventh time since 1955 that Penn or Princeton hasn’t won at least a piece of the championship.

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The latest AP poll came out this morning, and it couldn’t have been more interesting. I wasn’t expecting North Carolina to jump over Memphis. I was thrilled to see Davidson hit the poll at 25. I still think that the poll is too flattering to my beloved Big Ten – they have four ranked teams, but that makes the conference seem stronger than it will prove to be in the tournament.

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In most sports, there is a difference between the teams I like and the teams that are ultimately going to win it all. That’s occasionally frustrating, but I am used to it by now. This is definitely the case in college basketball. The difference with that sport, though, is that teams can have an excellent tournament run without winning it all. For some teams a single win is more than they could hope for. For others, the Sweet Sixteen would be an amazing accomplishment. Because of the different expectations, I spend far more time at this time of year worrying about teams that are going to have good tournament runs for them than I do worrying about who is ultimately going to cut down the nets. Here are five teams that I expect big things from when the Madness gets going:

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