ACC Tournament Odds: Duke Blue Devils Betting Favorites

It is no surprise that the top two seeds at the 2015 ACC tournament are the two favorites to win the championship Saturday at sportsbooks monitored by Odds Shark.

However, the team to beat right now is not the top-seeded Virginia Cavaliers (28-2), who won the ACC regular-season title for the second year in a row with an impressive 16-2 mark but are 9-5 to win the tourney.

Instead, oddsmakers like the second-seeded Duke Blue Devils (28-3)—the hottest team in the conference—who finished 15-3 in league play and are riding an 11-game winning streak that started with a 69-63 upset of Virginia as a 5.5-point road underdog on the college basketball odds back on January 31.

The Blue Devils are 5-4 favorites to win their first conference tournament since 2011, the third of three consecutive titles they enjoyed before seeing the Cavaliers, Miami Hurricanes and Florida State Seminoles take home the ACC’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament each of the past three years.

Duke is led by freshman center Jahlil Okafor, the first freshman to ever win ACC Player of the Year honors after averaging 17.6 points and 9.2 rebounds per game for head coach Mike Krzyzewski.

Virginia won just its second ACC tournament championship ever last season with a 72-63 victory against the Blue Devils as a 1.5-point underdog in the title game, before going on to earn a No. 1 seed in the 2014 NCAA tournament.

The Cavaliers hope to get a top seed again this year, as does Duke. While it is possible for both teams to be rewarded with top seeds if they face each other again in the championship game, a loss by either before Saturday could drop that school to a No. 2, assuming the other goes further.

Regardless, three other teams priced at 13-2 on those college basketball futures seem to have the best shot of keeping the top two seeds out of the title game, including the third-seeded Notre Dame Fighting Irish (26-5), fourth-seeded Louisville Cardinals (24-7) and fifth-seeded North Carolina Tar Heels (21-10).

Notre Dame was the last team to beat the Blue Devils, while Louisville just beat Virginia in the regular-season finale. Neither the Fighting Irish nor the Cardinals have ever won the ACC tourney, though, something the Tar Heels have accomplished 17 times, most recently in 2008. Duke has won it a record 19 times.