2025 March Madness Title Odds for Top Contenders Entering March
Believe it or not, March (Madness) is just around the corner, the most glorious month of the year beginning this Saturday.
While we won't get a bracket for the men's 2025 NCAA tournament for another couple of weeks, you can bet on the national champion today. Those lines have been out since last April, although they sure have changed over the past 10 months.
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 28 teams here, broken into buckets in such a way that we can count down to the favorites.
The first 10-team bucket of long shots won't 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 18 teams atop the current odds from DraftKings as of Thursday morning.
10 Long Shots (+5000 or Worse) Worth Mentioning
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Texas Longhorns, Arkansas Razorbacks, Oregon Ducks (+15000)
Memphis Tigers (+10000)
Connecticut Huskies, Illinois Fighting Illini (+8000)
Louisville Cardinals (+7500)
Kansas Jayhawks, Gonzaga Bulldogs, Marquette Golden Eagles (+6000)
Frankly, it feels like betting on anyone other than Auburn, Duke or Houston is a long shot right now. But if you're trying to throw a dart and hit a big payout, these feel like your least outlandish options.
Of the bunch, Gonzaga is without a doubt the one all the predictive metrics would tell you to take. The Zags are rated top 12 in each of NET, KenPom, BPI and Torvik, suggesting they ought to make it at least to the Sweet 16 for a 10th consecutive year. But they haven't beaten anyone that is a lock for a single-digit seed in the Dance. They've just been really good at convincingly winning the games they do win.
If you prefer a team that actually has some quality wins under its belt, Oregon entered play on Thursday with nine Quad 1 wins, tied for third-most in the nation behind only Auburn and Alabama.
The Ducks were the quite unexpected champion of the Players Era Festival, beating Texas A&M, San Diego State and Alabama in succession in late November. They've also heated up again recently after starting out 5-8 in Big Ten play, including a road win over Wisconsin last weekend. Not too shabby of a 150-1 underdog.
Memphis also has quite a few nice wins, sitting at 6-2 vs. Quad 1 and 10-3 against the top two Quads. The problem with the Tigers is they incessantly play to the level of their competition and are a prime candidate to get bounced in the first round.
Both Arkansas and Texas are on the bubble, but they're certainly battle-tested after life in the SEC. The Razorbacks are better now than they were six weeks ago, and it could be fun to have John Calipari coaching an underdog for a change. Meanwhile, the Longhorns have the best bucket-getter in the nation in Tre Johnson, who could just put the team on his back for a few weeks.
Louisville has won 16 of its last 17 games, playing at a high level while also taking threes at one of the highest rates in the nation. Could be a major X-factor.
Illinois, Kansas and Marquette all presently look like messes, but each at one point felt like serious title contenders with National Player of the Year-caliber players leading their respective charges. Any of Kasparas Jakucionis, Hunter Dickinson or Kam Jones could take over for these mercurial midwestern schools.
Surely the one that stands out, though, is the back-to-back champ at +8000.
It's a deserved line. UConn hasn't looked like a title contender much in the past two months. But the Huskies do have a decent stockpile of wins over likely tournament teams and they can beat anyone when Liam McNeeley and Alex Karaban both show up to some degree. It's not expected, but it also wouldn't be that shocking if they were to repeat 2014 and win it all as a No. 7 seed.
6 Non-Auburn SEC Contenders
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Kentucky Wildcats (+4000)
Texas A&M Aggies, Missouri Tigers (+3000)
Tennessee Volunteers (+1600)
Alabama Crimson Tide (+1000)
Florida Gators (+950)
With all due respect to Ole Miss (+9000) and Mississippi State (+7500), those Magnolia State locks for the Dance are in sort of their own tier above the SEC's bubble but behind this sextet of Final Four hopefuls.
Two things stand out about this tier, the first being that it feels like they're begging us to bet on Tennessee, doesn't it?
The Volunteers, Gators and Crimson Tide have been in lockstep for some time now, presently jockeying with each other for what might be the final spot on the No. 1 seed line. As of Thursday morning, all three were rated top six in each of the seven metrics on the tournament team sheets, virtually no separation between them.
Yet, for what we can only assume is a combination of the Rick Barnes factor, the fact that Tennessee has never been to a Final Four and the fact that Tennessee leans more heavily on its defense while Alabama and Florida are much more offensive forces, the Volunteers are lagging a good bit behind their fellow No. 1 seed seekers. Just feels a bit strange, but both Alabama and Florida seem correct where they are.
The other thing that stands out is Kentucky at the bottom of this group, despite a season sweep of Tennessee and victories over each of Duke, Florida and Gonzaga.
No, the Wildcats aren't elite on defense and maybe they rely a bit too much upon the three-ball. The lack of so much as a four-game winning streak since the beginning of December is concerning, too. But how are we going to have a blue-blood program with five wins over the KenPom top 10 at +4000, behind a Texas A&M team that frequently can't shoot its way out of a paper bag?
Missouri slightly ahead of Kentucky is probably correct, because the Tigers are a legit contender as maybe the 10th-best team in the nation. Considering they've won one tournament game in the past 15 years, though, it definitely is a little weird to see them ahead of Kentucky.
Final note: If you like Alabama at +1000, better get it now. The Crimson Tide finish the regular season with consecutive games against Tennessee, Florida and Auburn and would likely climb into the +750 range if they win at least two of the three.
5 'It's Finally Time for the Big Ten to Win Another Title' Candidates
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Purdue Boilermakers, Maryland Terrapins, Michigan Wolverines (+4500)
Wisconsin Badgers (+3500)
Michigan State Spartans (+2800)
Heading into the regular season, the Big Ten wasn't expected to have any serious title contenders, Purdue the league's highest-ranked team in the preseason AP poll at No. 14.
Over the course of the year, though, literally half of this 18-team league has spent at least one week ranked in the AP Top 20, leaving us all with a growing feeling that someone from the Big Ten could go on a tear in March and become the league's first national champion since Michigan State in 2000.
But the question still remains: Who is that someone?
Michigan State has emerged as the top contender, starting out 18-2 before sputtering in early February and getting back on track in recent weeks with consecutive wins at Illinois, vs. Purdue, at Michigan and at Maryland. The Spartans also have a home game against Wisconsin on Sunday with a chance to win four in a row over the other four teams in this group.
Jase Richardson's play since being put into the starting lineup six games ago has elevated MSU to a title threat. Prior to that, Sparty didn't have a go-to guy and was one of the worst three-point shooting teams in the country. That latter part is still true, but he's averaging 17 points per game during that stretch and is their most reliable perimeter weapon.
Wisconsin, on the other hand, has an entire roster of three-point options, boasting an offense every bit as good as what it had for those back-to-back Final Four runs in 2014-15. The tandem of John Tonje and John Blackwell could do something special this March.
Beyond that, there's a great three-man team in Purdue, the unique dual 7-footers attack of Michigan and Maryland's "Crab Five" that can—recent 58-55 loss to Michigan State notwithstanding—catch fire at a moment's notice. Whether any of the three has the depth or the consistency to win six straight tournament games is up for debate, but any of the three is capable of beating just about anyone.
4 Wild Cards
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Texas Tech Red Raiders (+4000)
Arizona Wildcats (+3500)
St. John's Red Storm (+2500)
Iowa State Cyclones (+2000)
Part of what makes these teams wild cards is they collectively did darn near nothing in nonconference play.
Iowa State did score a home win over Marquette, and St. John's won a home game against New Mexico that at least bears mentioning. But those were the two wins in what is an overall 2-9 record against nonconference opponents with any semblance of an at-large pulse.
It's more than just that, though, as all four have had stretches of dominance against tournament teams in league play.
Arizona is a wild card simply because of Caleb Love, who can shoot the Wildcats into or out of any game. Both Henri Veesaar and Anthony Dell'Orso have blossomed into key factors as the season has progressed, but it does forever feel like they are at the mercy of whichever Love shows up that night.
St. John's is a wild card because it's going to be one of the worst three-point shooting teams, as well as one of the worst free-throw shooting teams in the tournament. But it can win games with defense and rebounding and never gets blown out or outworked. The Johnnies also have the best coach in the sport, regardless of what Connecticut's coach has to say about that.
Iowa State is a wild card because of injuries. The Cyclones started out 15-1 with a tip-in loss to Auburn while healthy, but they struggled while Milan Momcilovic was out, and took two more recent losses, Keshon Gilbert out for both, Curtis Jones missing the first and not looking right in the second. Full-strength Iowa State has been great, but will it be/stay healthy in March?
And then Texas Tech is a wild card who won at Houston despite losing its best player (JT Toppin) and head coach to ejections early in that game, but who also has three losses to teams outside the KenPom top 75 and only one other win against the top 25 (vs. Arizona). The Red Raiders have won quite a few games in blowout fashion, but are they really a top-10 team?
3. Houston Cougars
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Championship Odds: +750
+750 is exactly where Houston was on March 1 of last year, tied with Purdue for the second-best odds behind Connecticut. And from that perspective, this line feels about right.
But it's weird that Houston's implied 11.76 percent chance of winning it all lags so far behind Duke's at 21.28 percent and Auburn's at 22.22 percent, right?
The Cougars haven't been ranked lower than fifth on KenPom all season, haven't been lower than third since Jan. 4 and even opened February at No. 1.
Having them narrowly behind the Tigers and Blue Devils is fine, but odds twice as long? Closer to Florida and Alabama than they are to Auburn and Duke?
That doesn't make much sense, especially now that Milos Uzan has transformed into the go-to star that Jamal Shead transformed into midway through last season.
Uzan went for 19 points, five assists and no turnovers in the recent win at Arizona. He also had at least 19 in each of the back-to-back wins over Iowa State and Texas Tech, including delivering the knockout blow from three-point range on the road against the Red Raiders.
Between Uzan, LJ Cryer and Emanuel Sharp, the Cougars have three excellent three-point shooters to go along with their elite defense and their wingspan for days in the paint. They've won 20 of their last 21 games, the lone loss a one-point game in overtime in what was a rare off game from Uzan.
There's no way they should be as far behind Duke and Auburn as they are in what is realistically a three-horse race among the favorites. As such, this might be the best value on the board.
2. Duke Blue Devils
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Championship Odds: +370
During the years that Gonzaga, Kentucky and Wichita State made their runs at a perfect season, I always felt it was a bit moronic when people would argue that they might be better off suffering a loss before the NCAA tournament; that slipping once during that tightrope walk would somehow help them get re-focused for the single-elimination tournament to win it all.
But was that early February loss at Clemson exactly what the doctor ordered for Duke?
The Blue Devils certainly weren't routinely struggling prior to that one. They were on a 16-game winning streak, 13 of them by double digits, including a 29-point road win over Syracuse just a few days prior.
However, a little reminder of their mortality might have been a good thing, because the Blue Devils have been even more of a freight train since then, winning their last five games by an average margin of 31 points. That includes the 43-point destruction of Illinois in what also might have been a much-needed hiatus from beating up on a weak ACC.
The big question now is health.
How is Maliq Brown's knee, which has caused him to miss the past two games? Or Tyrese Proctor's knee, injured late in the first half against Miami on Tuesday? Will that defensive stalwart in the paint and that veteran leader in the backcourt be at full strength for the Dance, or will the Blue Devils be forced to put up their video-game numbers on a higher difficulty level without them?
If all the regulars are good to go, Duke should at least make it to the Final Four, considering its current KenPom rating (+38.78) is higher than any team has finished any season in the past quarter century. (Next-best was 2000-01 Duke at +37.32.)
1. Auburn Tigers
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Championship Odds: +350
While Duke has the best KenPom rating in the nation, what Auburn has been doing on the quality wins front is just laughable.
As of Thursday morning, Duke is a respectable 6-3 vs. Quad 1, for a .667 winning percentage that ranks top five in the nation.
Meanwhile, Auburn is 9-2...
Against Quad 1A.
The Tigers have gone 15-2 (.882) against Quad 1, one of those losses coming on the road against Duke, on a night where Isaiah Evans went nuclear off the bench with 18 points for the Blue Devils, while not one but two Auburn starters were held scoreless in what was somehow still a nail-biter until the final minute.
And while Duke presently has a greater KenPom Net Rating than any team has finished the year with in the past 23 years, so does Auburn, the Tigers' 36.92 rating narrowly edging out 2014-15 Kentucky's mark of 36.91.
Long story short, this team has been outrageously good on offense.
Despite playing at only a marginally above-average tempo, they've scored at least 80 points in 75 percent of games played. And the only two times they've failed to score better than one point per possession were the games against Tennessee and Arkansas in which they shot a combined 7-of-44 (15.9 percent) from three-point range—and still managed to grind out wins on both of those rare poor shooting nights.
Between Johni Broome and Dylan Cardwell, Auburn also has one of the best shot-blocking defenses in the nation.
And while Broome gets most of the spotlight, this is the furthest thing from a one-man show, as six Tigers average at least 10 points per game, plus Cardwell and Chris Moore playing big roles beyond that sextet.
They check all the boxes and deserve to be the betting favorite, but the beauty of March Madness is you just never know what's going to happen.
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