Ncaa Champion Odds

1. NCAA football betting: Early odds for 2021 national champion released. Just before Alabama knocked off Ohio State in Miami, the national championship odds for next season were posted at BetMGM.
2. Virginia tops the first odds list for 2020 NCAA mens’ basketball national championship The Wahoos are a co-favorite to repeat in 2020. By David Fucillo @davidfucillo Apr 9, 2019, 7:01am EDT.

1. Ncaa Champion Odds
2. Ncaa Tournament Odds To Make

Earning a top seed in the NCAA Tournament is a huge advantage. In fact, number one seeds are almost 4 times more likely to win the championship than the next-best seed. Going back to the start of the modern bracket era, we have used the results of each round in the tournament so far to calculate the odds of each seed making it to each round.

This should be of good use when filling out your bracket. Below you will find the probabilities for each seed to advance to that round based on historical win percentages. So, 85% of number three seeds make it to the second round, but just over 11% make the Final Four, or about one every 2 years.

The final column is tabled “True Odds”. These would be the fair odds for each seed to win the NCAA Tournament based on historical results. In other words, these are the implied probabilities that one of the four teams at that seed wins the National Championship. There are many other factors that go into making truly expert bracket picks, but this is a good place to start, especially to guide you through later rounds.

NCAA Championship Winner Big 10 Conference Big 12 Conference PAC-12 Conference John R Wooden Award Big East Conference American Athletic Conference Atlantic 10 Conference Atlantic Coast Conference Mountain West Conference Southeastern Conference West Coast Conference Make Final Four.

Odds to Advance to Each Round of the Tourney by Bracket Seed

Tournament Win/Loss Statistics by Seeding

While those numbers give us a broad look at the probabilities for teams at different positions in the tournament, it may also help to know the exact results for each seed. You’ll find the records and win percentages in every bracket since 1985 in the tables below. These differ from the table above in that they show how each team does in each round once they have reached it.

First Round

The opening slate is unsurprisingly the most predictable. At seeds 1-4 we can advance teams in our bracket without much worry of an upset. The only real surprise is that 12 seeds perform as well against 5 seeds as 11s do against 6 seeds. 2018 marked the first time in history a #1 upset a #16, kudos to you if you picked UMBC over Virginia! The odds are this won’t happen again for a long time. You are better off assuming all #1 seeds are going to advance past this round.

Second Round

The second round is where you start to find a lot of variation versus what you would expect based strictly on seeding. Number nine seeds have been terrible in their second game, while ten seeds win their second round games over 40% of the time. Top ranked teams at this point in the tournament are still a safe bet with a #1 being upset only once every 3-4 years.

Sweet 16

The Sweet 16 is where the better ranked teams really start to settle in. If you are a 1-3 seed that has made it this far, chances are you are going to advance. One interesting note here is that 8 seeds that have made it this far are more likely to advance than 3-7 seed. The trick, of course, is picking which 8 seed is going to advance. A #8 has been in this situation in just 37% of the brackets in the last 35 years.

Elite 8

This round appears to be the biggest equalizer. Teams who reach this point in the tournament are obviously talented and have either had an easy bracket thus far or have overcome some obstacles. This makes the Elite 8 ripe for upsets.

Final Four

Similar to the Elite 8, teams who make it this far, regardless of seed, are going to be a tough out. All this means is that if you select a non-number-one to make the Final Four, you shouldn’t feel obligated to pick them to lose at this point.

Championship Game

No surprise here that #1s win the Championship more often than any other, especially considering seven championship games have featured two number one teams. No team seeded higher than 8th has reached the title game as of yet, but at some point one would have to assume a 9 or 10 can break through.

Mar 8, 2020; Champaign, Illinois, USA; Illinois Fighting Illini head coach Brad Underwood celebrates with fans after a game against the Iowa Hawkeyes at State Farm Center. Mandatory Credit: Patrick Gorski-USA TODAY Sports

No college basketball team is perfect. Most of them have at least one flaw -- many of them more than one. But it takes just six consecutive wins to reach the pinnacle of college basketball in March Madness. It's all about minimizing blemishes, maximizing strengths, banding together for a run and, yes, stumbling into some luck along the way.

Easier said than done for some.

Warts cannot simply be ignored, and they mustn't be, either. If you're looking to wager some hard-earned cheddar, you want to wager it properly. You need all the information you can get. So, using updated futures odds at William Hill Sportsbook, I've sorted through the top 10 favorites to win the 2021 NCAA championship and identified each of the 10 teams' flaws, some minor and some major. In doing so, you, the bettor, can make informed decisions on which team to fade and which to hop on board with as tourney time fast approaches.

1. Gonzaga

Title odds: 3-1 Shortcoming: Worst 3-point shooting team of Few era

OK, so you know how I mentioned most teams have at least one flaw? About that: Gonzaga might be the exception. This team (15-0) has the No. 2 offense and No. 13 defense in adjusted efficiency. It has a perfect blend of young NBA talent (Jalen Suggs) and veteran NBA talent (Corey Kispert). It also has experienced upperclassmen (Andrew Nembhard and Joel Ayayi) to boot. Any weakness identified would be nitpicking the nitpick. But true to my word, I promised flaws, so I offer this minor quibble: this team's 3-point shooting percentage on the season of 35.3% is statistically tied for the worst of the Mark Few era. They make up for it in other ways -- for example, they lead college basketball in 2-point shooting percentage (and 35.3% from 3 is a totally respectable clip), but it's at least something to keep an eye on. No one outside of Kispert and Suggs is hitting above 35% from deep.

Ncaa Champion Odds

2. Baylor

Title odds: 7-1 Shortcoming: Rebounding

Is being too good a flaw? (Asking for Gonzaga and Baylor!) The Bears (14-0) continue to wreak havoc on every team they face, with only two of its wins -- at Texas Tech and against Kansas -- coming by a single-digit margin (and both were by eight points). It is the only team in college hoops with a top-three offense and top-three defense. If there's one thing that sticks out here as a flaw it is its rebounding; it has been outrebounded in three of its last four games, and has a defensive rebounding rate that ranks among the worst in the Big 12. That's in no small part because of its guard-heavy lineup that most frequently features 6-foot-5 Mark Vital at the 4 and 6-foot-8 Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua at the 5.

3. Villanova

Title odds: 10-1 Shortcoming: Frontcourt size

With a wildly-talented backcourt that is committing the fewest turnovers per game in college basketball, Villanova's frontcourt combination is plenty talented -- but plenty small, too. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise -- size matters. Regular starter at power forward, Cole Swider, is listed at 6-foot-9 -- the same height as regular starter at center, Jeremiah Robinson-Earl. No one playing significant minutes is taller. It hasn't necessarily been a problem -- Nova is 10-1 and the class of the Big East -- but its block rate of just 5.3% rates worst among all major seven conferences in the sport. The fact that teams don't face any threat of getting shots blocked is a minor one for Villanova, considering everything else it does so exceedingly well. But when it faces big frontcourts or teams that have capable centers who can maneuver around the paint, it could present some real problems.

4. Michigan

Title odds: 12-1 Shortcoming: Defensive pressure

Juwan Howard has crafted an upperclassmen-heavy roster that has everything: A top-10 defense, a top-10 offense, a killer freshman in Hunter Dickinson and a legit NBA wing in Isaiah Livers. So, like others on this list, I'm grasping at straws to find a true flaw. There's a good chance it wins the Big Ten by multiple games. But a chink in UM's armor, notably, is that for as good as it is on defense, it's not a havoc-wreaking unit; it ranks in the bottom 50 nationally in steal rate and in turnover rate. To make up for it, the Wolverines boast the No. 1 defense in shooting percentage off 2-point attempts and are constantly able to affect shots at the rim with Franz Wagner and Hunter Dickinson. (Read between the lines here and you can see why, at these odds, I'm jumping on all the Michigan futures I can get my hands on.)

5. Iowa

Title odds: 13-1 Shortcoming: Defense

So here's the thing: Iowa's offense is gunning for all-time great. It ranks first nationally in adjusted efficiency at KenPom and second nationally in total points per game, all behind an unstoppable force in National Player of the Year frontrunner Luka Garza. That's all well and good, and reason why the Hawkeyes should be considered a title threat. But unfortunately, the biggest threat to their title chances might be their own defense. They have the second-worst defense in adjusted efficiency at KenPom among all Big Ten teams, and rank just inside the top-100 (at No. 99!) nationally. No NCAA champion in at least the last two decades has ever won it all with a defense that rated outside the top 15, much less one teetering close to outside the top-100.

6. Texas

Title odds: 18-1 Shortcoming: Lack of havoc created defensively

Texas is very, very good, and its home loss while shorthanded and without coach Shaka Smart seems like a write-off. So I turned to trusty KenPom.com for help here, and what KenPom told me is that its non-steal turnovers occurrence is not particularly flattering. It ranks 278th nationally on offense in that category -- worst among all Big 12 teams -- and 297th nationally on defense -- second-worst among all Big 12 teams. In short, it commits a lot of unusual, nontraditional turnovers per game while not forcing very many. Yet it has a top-10 defense overall, a veteran backcourt and an 11-3 record to show for it. This is Smart's best Texas team to date, but ironically for a coach who burnished his brand with a defense centered around havoc, this team creates very little of it.

7. Tennessee

Title odds: 18-1 Shortcoming: Offense

Rick Barnes is doing Rick Barnes things in Knoxville, with his best-ever Vols defense and a slew of talents both young and old. But to say UT's offense is challenged would be putting it mildly. This team struggles to score points. It barely escaped Mississippi State on Tuesday, winning 56-53, but had taken two consecutive losses prior to that with offensive outputs of 49 to Florida and 64 to Missouri. The offense isn't quite modernized, either, with only 24.5% of its points being accounted for by 3s, ranking in the bottom 50 of all teams in the sport. Success shooting the 3 isn't great to exacerbate that weakness, either, with a 32.5% hit rate that ranks 293rd. So how, you might wonder, is Tennessee 11-3? It has the No. 2 defense in college basketball and ranks No. 6 in adjusted shot quality, per date from ShotQuality.com. So the shots it is taking are especially effective even if the offense, on the whole, isn't.

8. Illinois

Title odds: 20-1 Shortcoming: Inconsistency

If you want to wager futures on a team that could absolutely, positively destroy every team in its NCAA Tournament path, Illinois might be just the team for you. But that should also come with a warning label in bold: it very well could play four consecutive great games before laying a big, stinky egg in a big spot. That's been the problem with the Illini. They've notched some truly impressive wins -- over Duke by 15, Minnesota by 27, Northwestern by 25 -- but they have also lost some head-scratchers. And it's not just that losses to Rutgers or Maryland is clouding the view of this team. It's that, for as talented and impactful as Ayo Dosunmu and Kofi Cockburn are, sometimes this team just doesn't have the goods. If Illinois can be consistent and sustain its highest highs, it'll be a worthy, warranted title pick. If not, it'll be a highly volatile futures bet I'm going to do everything in my power to fade. Right now, it's the latter.

9. Creighton

Title odds: 25-1 Shortcoming: Closing big games

Struggles in close games have sapped Creighton's ability to groom its resume from really good to really great. It lost by a point to Kansas and by five points to Marquette, both in December. It also lost in OT to Butler by four points earlier this month in a game it should've won and by four points to Providence the game thereafter. It hasn't been a total disaster -- the Bluejays won close games against UConn, Xavier and Providence -- but it hasn't been able to close in several big-game situations in the way you'd ideally likely to see and expect from a true title threat.

10. Houston

Title odds: 25-1 Shortcoming: Shot-making

Ncaa Tournament Odds To Make

Losing All-AAC guard and preseason AAC Player of the Year Caleb Mills would, in theory, dock Houston's chances of cutting down the nets in Indy. Nope. Houston's won six straight since he last played a game behind a dominant stretch with double-digit wins over Tulsa, Temple, UCF, Tulane and SMU. This team has some serious juice, built around a former five-star prospect in Quentin Grimes and a rising superstar sophomore in Marcus Sasser. But the shot-making isn't especially overwhelming, even if its offense is top-20 good. It is making 46.7% on 2-point shots and 33.9% from 3, both well outside the top 100. The team's top dogs are getting theirs, but the team's shot-making skills on the whole hasn't been all that effective. By extension, that puts even more pressure on Grimes and Sasser to continue producing. At some point, teams are going to focus in on locking up their top two weapons or dare them to do it all by taking away the ancillary pieces. May not happen in AAC play, but it does seem like Houston may be overvalued just a tad based on those circumstances.