Men's NCAA Tournament 2025: Buying or Selling for Top Contenders
As you work through either your one and only bracket or your 50th set of picks since the 2025 men's NCAA tournament field was announced Sunday night, let's take a closer look at some of the top contenders.
We'll briefly examine each of the four No. 1 and four No. 2 seeds and come to a conclusion on whether we're buying or selling their title odds.
(Click here to play the NCAA March Madness Men's Bracket Challenge.)
To be clear, I'm buying all eight of these teams as viable candidates to win the national championship.
What we're buying or selling are their national championship odds, and their implied probability of winning it all. And I'll tell you up front that the lines for the top three teams are so short that it feels foolish to bet on any of them and it makes the second tier of contenders look much juicier at much longer odds.
Odds are from DraftKings as of Monday morning. Teams are presented in ascending order of odds.
St. John's Red Storm
1 of 8
Odds: +2800
Reason to Buy: Elite defense, never get blown out
St. John's leads the nation in adjusted defensive efficiency. Its relentless pressure and physicality limited opponents to 65.9 points per game.
A 99-98 double-overtime game against Baylor inflated that number a bit, too. Not a single opponent scored more than 77 in regulation against the Red Storm this season, though.
That's a big part of why they have been impossible to soundly defeat. Their four losses on the year came by a combined margin of seven points, and only one of those losses came since New Year's.
Reason to Sell: Can't shoot
In 13 games played since the beginning of February, St. John's is shooting 44.1 percent from the field, 31.3 percent from three-point range and 67.3 percent from the free-throw line.
Their full-year numbers are a bit better, but what they are putting up lately is just atrocious, on par with Minnesota's offense.
The Johnnies do dominate the offensive glass and the turnover battle, resulting in 7.4 more field-goal attempts per game than they allow. But is that enough?
Verdict: Selling
We'll also get into this momentarily as a concern for Michigan State, but it's really problematic for St. John's: What was the best win here?
Heck, what was the best opponent here?
St. John's did not face a single team that finished top 25 in the NET. Its best wins were the three-game sweep of Marquette, all of which came after the Golden Eagles started to drop off a cliff at the beginning of February.
Rick Pitino's "redemption tour" has been quite the inescapable narrative, and the man is clearly an excellent coach. However, we don't have any clue what the Johnnies will do against top competition. The projected second-round matchup with Kansas might be the best opponent they've faced all season, and it's been a brutally down year for the Jayhawks.
Michigan State Spartans
2 of 8
Odds: +2500
Reason to Buy: Top-five team over the past five weeks
Dating back to Valentine's Day, Michigan State has been the fifth-best team in the country, winning seven games (including four away from home) against teams that earned a No. 6 seed or better. That's per Bart Torvik data, not just a flippant proclamation. And save for the half-court buzzer-beater at Maryland, they were all fairly convincing victories.
This incredible run stems from Jase Richardson's marked improvement since he was inserted into the starting lineup. Through 21 games, the freshman guard was averaging 9.3 points and 2.4 rebounds in 21.7 minutes per game. Since then, he's at 17.3 points and 4.8 rebounds in 30.5 minutes per game while shooting 50 percent from the field and 42.3 percent from three-point range.
Not having an actual star is what kept the Spartans from feeling like a legitimate contender, even as they started out 18-2. That's no longer the case.
Reason to Sell: Lack of elite wins
Only Auburn (15) had more Quad 1 wins than Michigan State's 13. The Spartans put together a rock-solid resume and undoubtedly deserved the No. 2 seed they received.
But where are the great, elite wins?
Florida had five wins over the top six overall seeds. Tennessee and Auburn each had three. Alabama had two. Duke beat Auburn. Houston won at Texas Tech. And Michigan State...won a home game against No. 12 overall seed Wisconsin before also losing to the Badgers in the Big Ten tournament.
Road wins over Maryland, Michigan and Illinois are no joke, but MSU may need to run through Iowa State, Auburn, Florida and Duke/Houston to win this year's title. The Spartans haven't done anything close to one of those, let alone four straight.
Verdict: Buying
Despitethe real concern that we haven't seen Sparty even play in a Final Four-caliber game, let alone win one of them, +2500 is a mighty juicy line for a No. 2 seed.
Save for Marquette—which got a +2500 line after playing its final six games before the tournament without Tyler Kolek—every top-two seed in last year's dance was at +1800 or better. This Michigan State team is almost certainly better than some of those teams were.
Alabama Crimson Tide
3 of 8
Odds: +1800
Reason to Buy: Top-scoring team in the country
Between their breakneck pace and remarkable efficiency, the Crimson Tide led the nation in scoring, and it wasn't even close.
Florida's offense is really, really good, and the Gators played one more game than Alabama...yet they finished 103 points behind the Crimson Tide. Gonzaga's 86.6 PPG scoring average was the closest to Alabama's mark of 91.1.
That formula sure worked for the Crimson Tide last year, as they averaged 89.8 points during their first four tournament wins before running into a Connecticut-sized wood chipper in the Final Four.
Reason to Sell: Holy defensive regression, Batman
Alabama's plan always has been to outscore its competition in a race to at least 80 points. The Crimson Tide used to try a little bit on defense, though.
They allowed 78.5 points during their 21-3 start to the year. Allowing 89.2 points over their last nine games was the biggest culprit of their 4-5 finish.
Sure, those nine games came against Auburn (twice), Florida (twice), Kentucky (twice), Tennessee, Missouri and Mississippi State. That's not exactly a cakewalk to the finish line. But they also had a season-long gauntlet of a schedule and didn't start regularly hemorrhaging points until just recently.
Verdict: Buying
Definitely don't love this line as much as the one coming up next, but +1800 is almost comical for what was a Top-10 team all season long despite a preposterous schedule that resulted in more Quad 1A wins (10) than any other team in the country.
Alabama won at Auburn, beat Houston on a neutral court, dropped 96-plus points in all three of its wins over Kentucky and opened March as a virtually indisputable projected No. 1 seed. The Crimson Tide were +1000 to win it all just a few weeks ago and have a far better than 5.26 percent chance of cutting down the nets if they can get into a groove.
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Tennessee Volunteers
4 of 8
Odds: +1600
Reason to Buy: Defense wins championships
As per usual, Tennessee's defense is elite. The Vols couldn't do much to slow down blistering-hot Florida in the SEC title game, but that 86-point outlier merely brought their year-to-date average up to 63.0 points allowed per game.
They're third in the nation in adjusted defensive efficiency, fifth in block percentage and first in three-point percentage against. It's always terrifying to put any faith in that latter data point. However, they were also No. 1 in 2023 and considerably above-average last year, so they clearly know how to make opponents settle for tough threes.
Auburn is having a historically great offensive season, but it was held to 65 and 53 points the two times it faced Tennessee.
Reason to Sell: Can anyone other than Lanier score?
New name, same story. This was the concern with Tennessee last year. The only difference is that it's now Chaz Lanier as opposed to Dalton Knecht.
When Lanier scores at least 18 points, that's ball game. Tennessee is 19-0 in those games. It's basically a coin flip for the Vols if he falls short of that threshold, though. They're 8-7 when Lanier scores 17 or fewer.
They do at least have more options this year. Both Zakai Zeigler and Jordan Gainey are considerably more assertive scorers than they were last year, and Igor Milicic is averaging 10 points per game as well. But they're still reliant upon Lanier getting going.
Verdict: Buying
For Duke, Auburn and Florida to all be at +380 or better, oddsmakers had to nerf some of the other lines to get the overall implied odds down into the 141 percent range. (Got to love futures.) This is where the value is almost too good to resist.
Tennessee split with Auburn, with both games coming right down to the wire. It won one of its three games against Florida by 20 points, even with both Zeigler and Milicic out. Yet the Vols are at +1600 while those other SEC squads are better than +400? They have less than a 6 percent chance of winning it all, while both of those teams are north of 20 percent?
That's lunacy.
Houston Cougars
5 of 8
Odds: +600
Reason to Buy: They're 26-1 since the end of November
While the national media fixated on Cooper Flagg, Duke, Auburn, the SEC in general and basically anything other than Houston turning in yet another phenomenal season of defensive excellence, you might have missed the boat on how ridiculously good the Cougars have been.
Had Kansas gone 19-1 in Big 12 play during a stretch of 26 wins in 27 games while Torvik graded them as hands-down the best team in the country, there would've been a nonstop discussion of all-time greatness. However, Houston was almost a forgotten juggernaut that should not be taken lightly heading into this tournament.
Reason to Sell: Why should this year be any different?
Houston was No. 4 on KenPom heading into the 2022 NCAA tournament, No. 1 at the start of the 2023 dance and only narrowly behind UConn heading into last year's tournament...and it missed the Final Four in all three years.
There have been a lot of parallels drawn between this year's Houston team and the 2019 Virginia team that—after a half-decade of KenPom dominance and NCAA tournament shortcomings—finally won a title behind the strength of a perimeter attack that was more unstoppable than usual.
But maybe this is more of a Gonzaga situation where a championship never comes regardless of how much KenPom's algorithm loves them year after year after year.
Verdict: Buying
At least this is a little more respectable than it was at the beginning of March (+750). Still, Houston lagging well behind both Duke and Auburn and now also falling behind red-hot Florida is kind of ridiculous.
If the Blue Devils are +350 and the Tigers are +350, the Cougars should be +400 at worst. There's good value at this line.
Florida Gators
6 of 8
Odds: +380
Reason to Buy: Ain't nobody hotter
Florida has won 12 of its last 13 games, including wins over both Auburn and Alabama, convincing victories over Alabama and Tennessee in the SEC tournament as well as wins by at least 11 points each over fellow tournament teams Vanderbilt, Mississippi State, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Ole Miss and Missouri.
Per T-Rank data on Torvik, they've been the second-best team in the country since Feb. 3, only slightly behind Duke, who has that 43-point win over Illinois doing some heavy lifting there.
Even in Florida's lone loss of the bunch, it was just a horrific first 12 minutes on the road against a desperate bubble team (Georgia). After getting punched in the mouth and trailing 39-13, the Gators stormed all the way back and actually took a late lead. They've been on a ridiculous heater.
Reason to Sell: Is their defense good enough?
Florida's offense during this recent run has been something else, but are we all-in on this defense?
The metrics love 'em. Top 10 on KenPom. But they've allowed 80.4 points per game (while averaging 74.3 possessions) over their last seven contests.
Just about every national champ has at least one game where the shots just aren't falling like usual and it has to grind out a win with defense. Maybe Florida can do so, but it has allowed at least 81 points in regulation on nine occasions. Neither Duke nor Houston has done so once.
Verdict: Selling
We'll discuss this when we get to Duke as well, but did you know UConn was +450 to open last year's tournament? Houston was second at +500, while the third-best odds had Purdue at +600.
Is this Florida team seriously 46 percent more likely to win the tournament than the Boilermakers were?
The time to buy Florida was three weeks ago. When I wrote about title odds on Feb. 28, the Gators were +950. Yes, they've been incredible since then, but you're paying one heck of a waited-too-long tax if you take them now.
Auburn Tigers
7 of 8
Odds: +350
Reason to Buy: Best team in best league (ever?)
In case it wasn't clear from the sheer volume of teams that it got into the NCAA tournament, the 2024-25 SEC was historically incredible. The 16 teams collectively went 185-23 in nonconference play, decimating the ACC in particular and racking up a ton of Quad 1 wins before passing over 100 more of them back and forth during league play.
Through it all, though, there was Auburn atop the mountain, starting out 27-2 overall and 15-1 in SEC play before maybe (understandably) taking its foot off the gas a bit down the stretch after clinching the regular-season title and almost certainly locking up a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament.
Johni Broome had an outstanding season, worthy of National Player of the Year honors. And he was merely the most noteworthy cog of this eight-man machine. The whole team was stellar.
Reason to Sell: Limping to the finish line
A graphic on ESPN on Saturday said no team has won a national championship after losing three of its final four games before the NCAA tournament.
You can have a rough patch and still win it all. UConn did for an entire month in the middle of the 2022-23 campaign. But no one backs their way into a six-game winning streak at the most important point in the season.
Verdict: Selling
Auburn was neck-and-neck with Duke in terms of historical efficiency, on pace for one of the greatest offensive seasons of all-time. And then it averaged 72.5 points while losing three of its final four games. Tahaad Pettiford was a ghost in the SEC tournament, which was a sobering reminder of how much Auburn's ceiling can be dependent upon a backup freshman point guard.
The Tigers are absolutely a threat to win it all, but +350 is a tough sell.
Duke Blue Devils
8 of 8
Odds: +350
Reason to Buy: Historical greatness
Individual greatness is one thing, which Duke has with Cooper Flagg. But that's not the reason to buy stock in the Blue Devils. If anything, it's a reason to sell them, as the Wooden Award winner has won a national championship just twice since 2001: Kentucky's Anthony Davis in 2012 and Villanova's Jalen Brunson in 2018.
What Duke also has is team greatness. It boasts the highest adjusted efficiency margin on KenPom since the 1998-99 Duke Blue Devils, who lost to Connecticut in one of the greatest national championships ever played.
This team is much more than just Flagg, which was loudly reinforced this past week when it had to play most of the ACC tournament without him.
Reason to Sell: How's that ankle?
According to multiple national reports, Duke expects Flagg (ankle sprain) to be available for the NCAA tournament. It held him out of the final two games of the ACC tournament as a precaution.
What percent health are we talking here, though? And how far below 100 percent would that need to be before you want no part of Duke as the betting favorite to win it all?
Also, is Maliq Brown (dislocated shoulder) going to be available? He barely scores at all, but he has been a major factor for Duke both on the glass and on defense. If he's out and Flagg is limited, Duke's ceiling can't possibly be as high, can it?
Verdict: Selling
Even if Duke was at full strength, +350 is a little much, isn't it? 22.2 percent implied odds? UConn was at +450 heading into last year's tournament, and everyone knew to pick either Purdue or the reigning champs to win it all. There are considerably more legitimate candidates this year.
That plus the injury issues makes the Blue Devils a sell, even though they're deservedly the co-favorite.
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