March Madness Odds: Sooners Lead Tar Heels on NCAA Tournament Betting Futures

With a little more than a month to go before March Madness begins, two Big 12 teams are among the favorites to cut down the nets at the end of the 2016 NCAA tournament, led by the third-ranked Oklahoma Sooners at 7-1 odds at sportsbooks monitored by Odds Shark.

The Sooners (20-3) are currently tied atop the Big 12 standings with the sixth-ranked Kansas Jayhawks (20-4) at 8-3 after the teams won key home games on Monday and Tuesday, respectively. The ninth-ranked North Carolina Tar Heels (20-4) are the 15-2 second choice.

Oklahoma recently topped the Texas Longhorns 63-60 on a three-pointer by leading scorer and National Player of the Year favorite Buddy Hield, while Kansas knocked off the West Virginia Mountaineers 75-65 behind 21 points from Perry Ellis.

The Jayhawks have won or tied for the Big 12 regular-season championship the last 11 years, and they are in a group of five schools listed at 12-1 to win the national championship in Houston on April 4.

Despite their loss at Kansas, the 10th-ranked Mountaineers (19-5) are also tied for the conference lead with the Jayhawks and Sooners, and they are 28-1 to win it all.

Three Big Ten teams are in that group at 12-1 as well, including the second-ranked Maryland Terrapins (22-3), fourth-ranked Iowa Hawkeyes (19-4) and eighth-ranked Michigan State Spartans (20-5).

The Hawkeyes sit atop the conference with a 10-1 mark, followed by the Terrapins at 10-2. The Spartans fell to 7-5 in Big Ten play following an 82-81 road loss to the Purdue Boilermakers (20-5) on Tuesday.

The 18th-ranked Boilermakers are fourth in the conference at 8-4, with the Indiana Hoosiers (19-5) the only team ahead of them in the standings besides Iowa and Maryland at 9-2. Like West Virginia, Purdue is also a bit of a long shot at 28-1 to win the national title, while Indiana is 33-1.

The fifth team sitting at 12-1 is the top-ranked Villanova Wildcats (21-3), who lead the Big East with an 11-1 record. The Wildcats have won four in a row since losing to the 20th-ranked Providence Friars (18-6), one of three teams from the conference in the Top 25.

The Friars are 40-1 on the odds to win the NCAA tournament, while the fifth-ranked Xavier Musketeers (21-3) are 16-1.