NCAA Tournament: Updated National Championship Odds

The NCAA tournament has just three games remaining before March Madness and the college basketball season comes to an end and a national champion is crowned. The Final Four is set for this weekend, and the four teams still standing are the Michigan Wolverines, Arizona Wildcats, Illinois Fighting Illini and UConn Huskies.

Michigan and Arizona are on a collision course in what feels like a true heavyweight battle between two No. 1 seeds and the two teams viewed as the clear frontrunners to win it all. On the other side of the bracket, Illinois and UConn will square off for the right to play for a title.

In many ways, it is fair to say the Michigan-Arizona showdown feels like the real championship before the championship. Crazy things always happen in March, and nobody is ever truly safe, but based on FanDuel's latest championship odds entering the Final Four, the market is clearly treating those two programs as the top teams left in the field.

Michigan is listed at +150 to win the national championship, with Arizona right behind at +185. Illinois sits at +450, while UConn is +650. And even that UConn number is not especially long, considering the stage of the tournament. The Huskies are the longest shot of the four, but +650 is still a relatively short price when there are only four teams left and each program is just two wins away from cutting down the nets.

That is what makes this market so interesting. This is not a situation where an underdog has to string together an improbable four- or five-game run. At this point, every team left is elite, and every team left only needs two wins to become the national champion.

That bigger-picture context is important when deciding where the best betting value lies. Yes, Michigan and Arizona are the two favorites, and understandably so. But they also have to go through each other just to reach the title game. If you are backing one of those teams to win it all, you are effectively betting on that team surviving what looks like the toughest remaining matchup in the tournament before then winning one more game against either Illinois or UConn.

Because of that, there is a real argument that the better value may sit with Illinois or UConn. Neither team is viewed as likely as Michigan or Arizona to win the championship, but both avoid that semifinal gauntlet. If either one can take care of business on its side of the bracket, it would then enter the title game just one win away from cashing at a much bigger number.

The market may be telling us Michigan vs. Arizona is the de facto national title game, but from a betting perspective, that does not automatically make either team the best play. Sometimes the strongest team is not the same thing as the best value, and that may be exactly the case heading into this year’s Final Four.

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Want to bet on game lines for the Final Four? Head over to Thrillzz before the games begin.