The Big East conference that came together for basketball years ago hit a huge milestone Sunday, when three of its teams earned top seeds in the NCAA tournament. Louisville, Pittsburgh and Connecticut were all No. 1, joined by North Carolina of the Atlantic Coast Conference.

The Big East is the league that gave us Patrick Ewing and John Thompson, one of the game’s biggest upsets (Villanova over Georgetown in 1985) and one of its greatest games (Syracuse over UConn in six overtimes just last week).

The conference also broke new ground in 1985, when it became the first to place three teams in the Final Four.

“It speaks volumes for what it means to win the Big East,” said Louisville coach Rick Pitino, whose Cardinals are the tournament’s overall top seed and will play in the Midwest.

The Cardinals (28-5), winners of the regular-season and conference championships in the nation’s top-ranked conference, will open against the winner of an opening-round game Tuesday between Alabama State and Morehead State.

The rest of the tournament starts Thursday and Friday.

NCAA Men’s Basketball picks are a popular form of sports betting online. If you know the odds and study the game and lines, you can come out ahead.

During March Madness, its about trying to guess the final team out of 64. Even though that seems like an impossible challenge, it’s very possible. NCAA Men’s basketball predictions that people usually pick for march madness is to NOT go with the number one team overall. It is very rare that the number 1 team overall takes it in March Madness. It is the most exciting thing to watch and there are usually so many upsets.

Odds of predicting all 64 teams correctly are 1 in over 5 million. This means you are guaranteed to get some picks wrong, you just don’t want to get them wrong in the later rounds.

The NCAA tournament is actually pretty random. Who could have guessed last year that George Mason University - a No. 11 seed - would make the Final Four? Well, 1,853 out of more than 1.5 million people who entered ESPN.com’s Tournament Challenge. This is why college basketball favorites are not your best picks during March Madness.

Here’s some good betting advice for betting on March Madness: don’t pick the higher seeds to win all the games. Even most casual college basketball fans know better than to pick all the No. 1 seeds to make it to the Final Four. Even picking 3 number 1 team’s can be a major risk. The last time 3 number one teams made it to the final four was 2001. Try to go with two No. one seeds and then some combination of twos, threes and fours for the last two spots. With some studying of the brackets and knowing the history of the brackets will put you on the right track. No one will correctly guess all 64 teams, if you do there are many sites that will offer you over a million dollars if you do, that’s how unlikely it is.