2024 March Madness Title Odds for Top Contenders Entering March

There’s good news and bad news for you, fellow college basketball-loving junkies.

The good news is that it’s now officially March. The NCAA tournament is so close we can almost taste it, along with all of its sweet and sour notes of absolute chaos.

The bad news is that we still need to wait another 16 days to actually get the bracket.

But the good (or possibly bad) news is that we don’t need to wait for a bracket to bet on a national champion. Those markets have basically been open since last year’s dance ended.

Today, we’re going to take a look through all of the current top candidates to win it all. All told, we’ll give you title odds for 21 teams here, broken into buckets in such a way that we can count down from six to one, like we will rounds of the NCAA tournament.

The first six-team bucket of long shots won’t really be comprised of “top contenders,” but what’s the point of talking title odds if not throwing a few darts, eh?

Beyond that, we’ll touch on each of the 15 teams atop the current odds from DraftKings as of Thursday morning.

Villanova Wildcats +20000

New Mexico Lobos +12000

Washington State Cougars +10000

Gonzaga Bulldogs +8000

Michigan State Spartans +5500

Baylor Bears +4500

How unlikely do you prefer your long shots?

Heck, aside from Baylor and Washington State, all of these teams still need to prove they actually belong in the field. Each one is hanging out somewhere along the bubble.

But if Villanova does get in, it has the three-point attack and hot/cold nature to possibly pull off a miraculous run—if it can get itself stuck on “hot.”

New Mexico’s starting five is arguably among the top 10 in the nation as far as pure talent is concerned, and the Lobos can beat absolutely anyone when they get rolling.

Washington State has already swept Arizona. It’s hard to believe the Cougars are this far down the list in light of that. (Their line would likely be more in the +5000 vicinity if they had played in the NCAA tournament more recently than 2008.)

Gonzaga appears to be hitting its stride at the right time and is looking to extend its streak of eight consecutive trips to the Sweet 16. Maybe a third appearance in the national championship game will finally be the charm?

Michigan State is Michigan State. Getting a middling seed and going on a deep run wouldn’t be anything new for the Spartans. Let’s not forget they were supposed to be a No. 1 seed before the regular season began and could potentially flip a switch if they ever figure out what they’re doing at center.

But the one that sticks out like a sore thumb here is Baylor.

The Bears won the national championship three years ago, and they have one of the most efficient offenses in the nation along with a tandem of possible one-and-done, lottery-pick freshmen in Ja’Kobe Walter and Yves Missi. They’ve won eight games against NET Top 50 foes and have only had one loss all season that got particularly out of hand—the “neutral” game in Detroit against Michigan State in mid-December.

So…what’s up with this +4500 line?

I suppose 16th-best odds is fair. That’s around where the Bears land in all of the predictive metrics. But falling behind an Illinois (+3500) team without a single Q1A win this season feels wrong and makes Baylor an extremely tempting pick.

Illinois Fighting Illini +3500 (15th-best odds)

Creighton Bluejays +3000 (14th-best odds)

Marquette Golden Eagles +2000 (tied for ninth-best odds)

Iowa State Cyclones +2000 (tied for ninth-best odds)

Arizona Wildcats +1400 (fifth-best odds)

Quite the hodgepodge of teams here who will probably each be picked to win it all in around 3 percent of brackets.

Illinois feels overvalued. The Illini never get blown out and do have a stockpile of good wins, but nary a great win. The Terrence Shannon Jr., Marcus Domask and Coleman Hawkins trio feels good enough to go on a deep run through a bunch of quality foes, but where’s the proof?

Creighton is stylistically the same team that made it to the Elite Eight last year, but with even more of a reliance upon three-pointers than before. We saw in the recent win over Connecticut what can happen when those shots are falling. Conversely, the Bluejays are 2-5 when shooting below 30 percent from distance, and they even lost a game to Providence in which they hit 14-of-29 from downtown. Can they get “2018 Villanova Hot” for six games?

Marquette’s line might be my favorite of any team on the board right now. You’re telling me we can get “barely top 10” odds on an AP Top Five team that won at Illinois, beat Kansas in Maui and almost beat Purdue the next day, even back when superstar Tyler Kolek was playing at less than full strength on a bad wheel? The Golden Eagles’ consistent disadvantage on the glass is a concern, but they can make up for it by forcing turnovers and running a tight ship on offense.

Iowa State can also create an advantage by forcing a lot of turnovers, but it might be a little too dependent on those steals. Is the Cyclones’ half-court offense good enough to survive a sure-handed foe that can shoot from distance—considering they are 1-5 in games where they have fewer steals than their opponent has made triples?

And then there’s Arizona, who felt like the title favorite a month into the season prior to suffering four losses against a just plain not good Pac-12. The metrics have never doubted the Wildcats, though. They have dominated on the glass all season long, averaging 90 points per game and scoring at least 70 in every contest.

The Wildcats might be more prone than most to a night where the opposition shoots the lights out from three-point land, but they also have the goods to score enough to win that type of game. This is a very good team who we have probably been undervaluing because of their conference—just like some of the best Gonzaga teams of the past two decades.

Duke Blue Devils +2800 (tied for 12th-best odds)

Kansas Jayhawks +2800 (tied for 12th-best odds)

Kentucky Wildcats +2200 (10th-best odds)

North Carolina Tar Heels +1800 (tied for sixth-best odds)

None of these four traditional powerhouses rank among the five betting favorites to win it all. That’s somewhat surprising given the amount of public money that inevitably pours in on them whenever they do have a legitimate contender.

In particular, the Duke line is stunning. The Blue Devils are No. 10 in the AP poll and No. 8 on KenPom, so you can actually get decent value on a Duke bet. When has that ever been the case before?

However, the most tempting of the bunch is Kentucky at +2200.

It ultimately feels like a stay-away line because of how often the Wildcats have not shown up for a game this season, particularly on defense. It just feels inevitable that at some point during a would-be six-game run to a championship, Kentucky would lay at least one egg and give up 90-plus points in a loss.

It also feels inevitable that one of their key players will get injured, as there has not been a game yet this season in which their entire 10-man rotation played. There are only 11 games in which they weren’t down at least two guys.

Even before the recent dominant performances against Auburn and Alabama, though, there was no question that “Peak Kentucky” is a top-five peak team in the nation. The Wildcats just have so many stars who can take over a game, particularly when Rob Dillingham gets into one of his “on fire in NBA Jam” grooves.

And that Auburn game—holding a great offense to 59 points on the road—was a vivid reminder that the Wildcats do know how to defend when properly motivated. So maybe they can avoid trying to sleepwalk through a game in the NCAA tournament and win the whole thing.

As far as Kansas and North Carolina go, it’s hard to argue with those lines.

The Jayhawks are kind of in limbo with Kevin McCullar Jr.’s health (knee) up in the air. But if he’s available, the combination of him, Hunter Dickinson, KJ Adams and the midseason breakout of Johnny Furphy could result in a championship.

The Tar Heels also have one heck of a nucleus in Armando Bacot, Harrison Ingram and red-hot senior superstar RJ Davis. When he’s scoring like there’s no tomorrow, when the other two are crashing the boards and when the defense is doing what it can, the ceiling is the roof.

Alabama Crimson Tide +2500 (11th-best odds)

Auburn Tigers +1800 (tied for sixth-best odds)

Tennessee Volunteers +1300 (fourth-best odds)

As far as the predictive metrics are concerned, these are three of the seven best teams in the nation. But at least as it pertains to Alabama and Auburn, where are the quality wins to support the notion that they should be viewed as legitimate threats to win it all?

Take out the home wins against each other, and then Alabama’s best wins are a season sweep of Mississippi State, who looks like a No. 10 seed. At least the Crimson Tide beat the Bulldogs, though. Auburn can’t even boast that, with its best win looking like the home blowout of South Carolina.

Blowout is the key word there, though, as what both of these rivals have done is just plain annihilate overmatched competition. They’ve gone combined 37-1 against Q2-Q4 with an average scoring margin of plus-22.3 points per game. That suggests they can take care of business against a No. 13-14 seed in the first round, but their combined 4-14 record against Q1 (2-12 if you take out the H2H games) makes these lines feel a little too generous.

(Also, why in the world is Auburn ahead of Alabama by a pretty considerable margin? If anything, Alabama should have the better line.)

Tennessee is intriguing, though.

The Volunteers lost three straight November games to Purdue, Kansas and North Carolina. However, even though Zakai Zeigler wasn’t quite right yet after tearing his ACL last February, they strung together those three consecutive losses by single digits away from home against title contenders, which is pretty impressive.

With a now healthy-looking Zeigler, they’ve remained impressive outside of the occasional night where Dalton Knecht doesn’t get enough help on offense. But those “can’t buy a bucket” games are occurring much less frequently than last year, as Tennessee has improved its scoring average from 70.8 points per game last season to 80.7 this year.

There’s still the whole “can’t trust a Rick Barnes team in March” dilemma. If that’s your best excuse for doubting these Vols, though, good luck with that.

Purdue Boilermakers +750 (tied for second-best odds)

Houston Cougars +750 (tied for second-best odds)

It’s almost not even debatable at this point that both of these teams will be No. 1 seeds on Selection Sunday. As is the case for Connecticut, Houston and Purdue are so far ahead of the logjam of teams jostling for the fourth No. 1 seed that they could just about go 0-4 the rest of the way (including their conference tournament openers) and still land on the top line.

What is much more debatable is whether they are actually built to win it all.

With Houston, you’re talking about a team that does a remarkable number of things at a “top 10 in the nation” level. The defense is second to none. The Cougars absolutely own both the turnover battle and the offensive glass on a nightly basis, resulting in about 12 more field-goal attempts per game than they allow. They are just plain not fun to play against and can grind many a foe into a pulp.

But they don’t shoot well, which is kind of a big deal in basketball.

Of the past 24 national champions, 23 ended their title run with an effective field-goal percentage north of 50.0 for the year. The exception to the rule was 2011 Connecticut, as it was the exception to many a rule for picking a champion. Houston is at 49.6 percent.

That’s not far enough below 50 percent to make you assume they can’t possibly get over that hump, but ranking around 225th in the nation in shooting the ball is concerning. (Houston is also barely top 300 in free-throw percentage, which doesn’t factor into eFG%.)

With Purdue, of course, it’s the recent history.

The Boilermakers didn’t just lose to No. 16 seed Fairleigh Dickinson last year. They also lost to No. 15 seed Saint Peter’s the previous year and to No. 13 seed North Texas in 2021.

Yes, they are markedly better than last season. Braden Smith’s freshman-to-sophomore leap could scale a tall building, and adding Lance Jones to the mix has been everything they hoped it could be. But are you ever going to feel comfortable writing Purdue’s name on your bracket six times?

Both of these teams are absolutely good enough to win it all. However, if Connecticut is +500 as the favorite, Houston and Purdue should probably be down in the +1000 range.

Connecticut Huskies +500 (best odds)

There’s still a few weeks left before we need to fill out our brackets, during which time opinions could change. But so long as Connecticut is healthy heading into the NCAA tournament, I can promise you right now they will be my pick to win it all.

Granted, my picks in recent years? Not great!

I had Houston over Arizona in the championship of last year’s bracket, and they won a combined two tournament games. The year before that, I had Gonzaga over Arizona in the title game, and they both got bounced in the Sweet 16. (Maybe I should stop picking Arizona, eh?) I did get the Gonzaga-Baylor title game matchup correct in 2021, but who didn’t have that one?

There’s just something about this Connecticut team that makes them feel like the only team that can be trusted at the end of a season that has been total anarchy, though.

Having to play chunks of the season without Stephon Castle and without Donovan Clingan were blessings in disguise, as it gave both Samson Johnson and Solomon Ball a lot of experience that could prove valuable off the bench in March. Those injuries also forced Tristen Newton to figure out how to consistently put this team on his back.

These Huskies go nine deep no problem. They have no clear weakness, unless you want to count “Creighton turning into a three-point inferno on its home court” against them. They’re dominant in the paint. They’re lethal from distance. And if any team in the country is used to playing through a tough whistle, it’s the fightin’ Danny Hurleys.

Lest you think this is the unhinged ranting of a UConn fanboy, just know that I grew up as a Duke fan and used to loathe Connecticut for those 1999 national championship and 2004 Final Four games. But real recognize real, and these Huskies are for real.

They should become the first repeat champions since 2006-07 Florida.

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