Actually, that's not a problem at all in this case. The Selbees actually bought their ticket numbers at RANDOM, letting the computers choose their numbers for them. They were guaranteed to get a fairly random selection of numbers. And with enough tickets, they were still basically guaranteed many wins statistically.

The MIT group was more strategic and actually narrowed down the specific list of numbers to avoid repetitions, maximize distribution, etc. They invested a lot more time and effort, but ultimately all they did was lower the variance of their wins. That is to say, on average, Selbee's random strategy and the MIT group won the same number of games over the long haul. The MIT group could just guarantee their number of wins would be pretty consistent every lottery they entered.

Here's an excerpt from a book that talks a little bit about the two strategies.