College Basketball National Championship Odds: The Curse Of #1 Looms Before Selection Sunday

The betting landscape has hardly changed at the top in recent weeks. Houston (+650) has maintained its top position and showcased its dominance once again against Memphis, who was the biggest remaining threat to beat the Coogs down the stretch. Per Barttorvik.com, Houston is ranked as the number three team in college basketball for adjusted offensive efficiency and are seventh for adjusted defensive efficiency, offering a true balanced attack with two top ten rankings for efficiency. 

College Basketball National Championship 2023 Betting

Some other contenders that are inching closer to being a co-favorite with Houston include the likes of Kansas (+1000), who owns the most Quadrant 1 wins in all of college basketball with 13 (no other team has 10), Purdue (+1000) who was able to bounce back by throttling Ohio State after losing to unranked NW, and Alabama (+850) who took a loss against the Tennessee Volunteers in Knoxville but bounced back on Saturday. All three of these teams have a legit chance of winning it all but it would not be shocking to see all three of these programs make the Elite Eight. 

In terms of the strongest conference, the Big 12 has four schools in the top five for Q1 wins this season and as mentioned above, Kansas takes the cake on these wins. The Big 12, SEC, and Big Ten all share the lead for number of teams projected to be in the tourney. The three conferences are likely to send eight schools each to the dance. In regards to the Top-50 in NET rankings, the Big Ten and Big 12 conferences share the top spot with eight schools within the Top-50 of NET rankings, this is something to consider when constructing brackets in less than a month.

With Selection Sunday less than a month away and conference tournaments kicking off within the next week and a half, we have had some teams who hae already clinched their regular season titles. With that being said, there are some conferences this week that can be clinched, those conferences include: The Summit League, the MEAC, which has Norfolk State and Howard at the top, the OVC which has Morehead State nursing a two-game cushion between themselves and UT-Martin and SE Missouri State. Lastly, Merrimack as well as Stonehill and Fairleigh Dickenson are all gunning for first in the Northeastern Conference. There are a ton of conferences that will go down to the last game of the season, setting up an intense March.