NCAA College Basketball Betting Odds Hoops

Betting on college basketball futures is a season-long odds market that opens before the start of the schedule and runs through the NCAA Tournament until a national champion is crowned during March Madness.

Futures odds will change for every team over the course of the season, with results, injuries and betting patterns forcing bookmakers to adjust their futures. Whatever odds you place your futures bet at are the odds at which it will pay out, regardless of where those odds move afterwards.

You can use our betting calculator to find out how much money you could win betting on college basketball futures. You can also learn more about futures odds with our futures betting guide.

Although they were a No. 1 seed last year, the eventual National Champion Kansas Jayhawks entered the tournament winners of its past five games and 11 out of its final 14. Then there's last season's runner-up, North Carolina. The Tar Heels won 12 of their final 15 regular season games and parlayed that with five tournament wins to reach the National Championship. By no means is this a fool-proof strategy, but it could help you win a few extra bucks.

Sure, it'd be lovely to cash in on a +100000 future bet on Farleigh Dickinson to win the National Championship, but as the odds imply, chances are you're more likely to rip up that ticket than to mosey on over to the betting counter to collect your winnings. You're probably better off taking that team against the spread in their first-round matchup than betting on them to win the whole thing. The payout won't nearly be as hefty, but your chances of winning some cash are exponentially better.

While this page tracks the odds to win the NCAA Tournament title – also called an “outright” betting market – there are myriad other ways for bettors to wager on the NCAA Tournament. The subsections below explore how to bet on March Madness in more detail.

March Madness Futures: Sweet 16 & Final Four Odds

Once the bracket is set, sportsbooks will release a number of other March Madness futures betting options. These include betting on teams to reach the Sweet 16 and Final Four odds. The payout is obviously lower than correctly picking the tournament winner, but the chances of winning these wagers is of course great. There is no single correct March Madness betting strategy; with the amount of roster (and even coaching) turnover in college basketball, each season has to be approached anew.

Moneyline

As with regular-season games, each game in the NCAA Tournament can be wagered on individually. The most straightforward way to bet on a March Madness game is to bet the moneyline. This means betting on a team to win the game straight-up. If they advance to the next round, you win your bet.

Point Spreads

You can also bet each game against the spread, meaning betting on either the favorite to win by more than a set number of points or the underdog to not lose by that same number of points. Betting against the spread will be more common for lopsided games, for example, if Gonzaga is a 35.5-point favorite against its first-round opponent, sportsbooks may not even post a moneyline.

Totals

Each March Madness game can also be bet over or under the game total. Sportsbooks will set a game total for each game in the tournament and they will be wildly different depending on which teams are playing. You could see totals anywhere from about 115.5 to 174.5. Teams that play at a slower tempo (think Virginia and Texas) tend to score fewer points (because there are fewer possessions over the course of the game) and vice versa for teams that play quickly (think Gonzaga and Alabama).

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The point spread is the most common way to bet on college basketball. The sportsbooks will give the supposedly stronger team a handicap in order to make things even. You might see Duke installed as the 8.5-point favorite in the March Madness lines for that hypothetical game against North Carolina. You would then be able to bet either on Duke -8.5 or N.C. State +8.5 in point spread. You would generally expect to find odds of -110 on either team to cover the spread, unless you find a reduced juice book that takes lower vigorish and offers -105 lines on each team.

If you bet on Duke to cover the spread, it would need to win by 9 or more points. However, you would be likely to find odds of -110 as opposed to -300, so your potential profit would be much higher. If you bet on N.C. State to cover that spread, it could either win the game or lose by no more than 8 points and your bet would pay off. However, you would be likely to find odds of -110 as opposed to +250, so your payout would be smaller.

You can also find a number of alternative point spread options at some of the best betting sites. If the official line was 8.5 points, a betting site might offer you the opportunity to bet on an alternative point spread line of 7.5, 6.5, 9.5 or 10.5. If you thought Duke would win convincingly, you could bet on Duke -10.5 to get better odds. If you thought N.C. State might struggle to cover an 8.5-point spread, but that it would get close, you could bet on N.C. State +9.5 and accept slightly less attractive odds. You could alternatively get better odds by going for N.C. State +6.5 to cover the spread. This point spread flexibility is only available at a few sportsbooks, but it can be really helpful. Other books allow you to buy or sell points or half-points to skew the spread in different directions, and that is a similar concept.

Sportsbooks will set college basketball lines relating to the total points that will be scored in a particular game. An example would be 144.5 points in a game between Wake Forest and Pac 12 heavyweights Oregon. You then have to predict whether the cumulative points scored by both teams will go over or under that line. Once again, you will typically see -110 on either outcome, unless it offers reduced juice NCAA Basketball odds. Some of the best sportsbooks will also allow you to bet on team totals. You might be able to bet on over or under 77.5 points for Oregon, as an example. Oregon would not have to win the game for your bet to pay off. It would simply need to score more than 77.5 points.