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2024 NCAA Tournament odds: Kansas is the March Madness … – CBS Sports
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A Daily SportsLine Betting Podcast
College basketball coaches said that Kansas would be the best team in the sport in 2023-24 by a wide margin this offseason in an anonymous poll conducted by Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander as part of CBS Sports’ annual Candid Coaches series. Oddsmakers seem to agree.
The Jayhawks are the betting favorite to win the 2024 NCAA Tournament, with 11-1 odds to win it all leading 350+ Division I teams as we sit here in mid-September, narrowly ahead of Michigan State, Kentucky, Duke, Purdue and Arizona. Those odds have improved only marginally, but nonetheless in a noteworthy way, since odds first opened after the conclusion of the 2022-23 season, as KU previously had the second-best odds at 15-1. Reigning champion UConn had the best opening odds at 12-1 followed by Duke at 15-1, same as KU’s. UConn’s odds have fallen in the last few months to 20-1, now (for my money) making the Huskies a potential sleeper pick despite the dearth of repeat champions in the sport over the years.
So which other teams are potentially good value bets as we spin ahead toward the season? Which teams at cost might be a stay-away? And which teams might be some longshots to keep an eye on?
I’ve compiled a list to answer all those questions below in a futures update with the season fast approaching.
When 2024 title odds first opened earlier this year, UConn was the betting favorite at 12-1 coming off its run to the national title. And while no team has repeated since Florida won the Big Dance in 2006 and 2007, UConn certainly looks like it has the horses — er, rather, the Huskies — to go back-to-back. Dan Hurley is the top coach in a loaded Big East and he’s armed with an ungodly amount of talent on his roster led by five-star freshman Stephon Castle, Rutgers transfer Cam Spencer and a returning bunch that includes Donovan Clingan and Tristen Newton.
Yes, yes, it’s true: Purdue became the second No. 1 seed in NCAA Tournament history earlier this year to fall to a No. 16 seed. It was an inexcusable, inexplicable loss. But guess what? The first team that did that, Virginia, came back after losing to UMBC in 2108 and won the whole darn thing the next year. Purdue has the talent to follow in UVa’s footsteps. Zach Edey will once again be a force to be reckoned with inside, and Matt Painter remains a top-10 level coach in the sport. With a more experienced backcourt and plenty of chips on shoulders, the Boilermakers present a really nice value.
This FAU team advanced all the way to the Final Four then brought back all five starters, and it’s like Vegas doesn’t even care. Put some respect on my Hoot Owls, oddsmakers! Dusty May is one of the sport’s rising coaching stars and his roster is reloaded for another real run this year. You could argue on paper they’re a top-five team, so getting them at these odds feels like stupid good value.
Since Mick Cronin took over the Bruins program, he was in four seasons won 19, 22, 27 and 31 games, steadily building UCLA into a powerhouse out west. If he keeps that steady crescendo up in the win column, next season might be 34+ wins and a natty.
That’s not implausible.
What’s also not implausible is that, jokes aside, UCLA might really have the best team on the West Coast next season. There’s some question marks that make its projections a bit hazy, including the loss of first-round pick Jaime Jaquez Jr. and other key pieces like Tyger Campbell, Amari Bailey and Jaylen Clark. But if you want to buy into uncertainty and put some blind trust into Cronin, it’d be a big payoff. Between transfers, freshmen and a foundational system and culture of winning I think UCLA could surprise a lot of people next season.
John Calipari raked in the No. 1 recruiting class in the country led by five-stars Justin Edwards, Aaron Bradshaw and DJ Wagner to go with key additions Zvonimir Ivisic and Tre Mitchell, among others, but — and pardon me, Big Blue Nation, but you deserve honesty — the vibes surrounding this program don’t inspire a lot of confidence. UK lost in the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament in March one year after losing as a No. 2 seed in Round 1 to Saint Peter’s.
At this point Wildcats fans are fed up and quickly running out of patience. With that looming into this season there’s also injuries to several key players, including Bradshaw and Ugonna Onyenso, which at the very least casts major doubt about how viable this team’s frontcourt will be. Can this team win the national championship? Sure, of course. Justin Edwards might wind up being the most impactful player in college next season given the flashes he showed on UK’s trip to Canada. But 12-1 odds feels a bit rich for a roster that has this many question marks in a program that has been clearly in a decline the last few seasons.
I follow Gary Parrish’s Top 25 (And 1) rankings over the summer religiously as a way to keep up-to-date with both macro and micro developments within the sport that help shape what the top teams might look like. So when he ranks them fifth, I take that as the gospel truth. That makes me think 12-1 — second-best odds for any team — is a smidge too much value.
Tom Izzo’s a Hall of Famer who famously shines bright in March and this team returns almost every major piece save for Joey Hauser, but there’s probably a bit too much optimism and blind faith being put in the impact of star freshmen Xavier Booker and Jeremy Fears. I’ll be glad to raise my hand on this one if proven wrong, but it feels like MSU should be seen as the second or third best team in its own conference, not in all of college hoops.
This is the point in the odds profiles where everything begins to get a little stinky. I wouldn’t waste my money on Villanova, UNC or St. John’s here at 40-1, but the team I’d most highly recommend fading of this 40-1 bunch is St. John’s. Rick Pitino’s arrival is a fun story and this program should be improved dramatically (admittedly: low bar!), but I can’t imagine wasting money here on a team that probably won’t even be good enough to make the NCAA Tournament.
Note: I defined “long shot” here as a team whose odds to win the natty was 60-1 or longer. That cut off the likes of Marquette (40-1) and USC (50-1), both of which I like at cost, but also kept me from grabbing low-hanging fruit (because it feels like both of those teams fall closer to the contender category than the long-shot category). Thus, the three teams that popped here were as follows:
Sean Miller is inarguably a top-15 coach in college basketball after taking over the Musketeers program after a hiatus from coaching and taking them to a 27-win season in his first season. Zach Freemantle’s injury adds some uncertainty to this team’s future projections, but even without stars Souley Boum and Colby Jones, Miller has a guard-friendly system that is destined to be one of the most potent offensive attacks in the sport once again.
The betting market may be overreacting to the loss of one-and-done star Brandon Miller here, giving Alabama 60-1 odds despite returning a breakout star in Mark Sears and enrolling one of the most coveted transfers on the market this offseason in Grant Nelson. Alabama under coach Nate Oats leans heavily into relying on analytics for its success and should once again be a 3-point-heavy team that contends near the top of the SEC.
Tad Boyle is no Deion Sanders, but Coach Prime’s recruiting prowess may already be rubbing off on the long-time Buffs basketball coach. Boyle is bringing in the program’s highest-rated signee in school history, five-star forward Cody Williams, along with star transfer Eddie Lampkin from TCU to reload from last season. Next to double-digit returning scorers Tristan Da Silva and KJ Simpson, Colorado’s basketball team — much like its football team — could turn some heads and be one of the bigger surprise successes this season.
– Odds via SportsLine consensus
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