The 2023 NCAA men’s college basketball tournament, commonly known as “March Madness” because of the crazy upsets that happen almost every year, brought out an estimated $15.5 billion in sports betting. That was a major increase over the 2022 tournament, which involved an estimated $3.1 billion in wagering. With more states legalizing sports gambling, this number is only expected to grow from one year to the next. One form of wagering on this tournament involves picking all of the outcomes in the tournament bracket. Theoretically, it is possible to get every matchup right. But what are the March Madness odds? Read on to find out – and to see how close people have gotten in the past.
NCAA Men’s Basketball: What Are the Odds of a Perfect March Madness Bracket? | College Basketball Odds
If you just guess or flip a coin on each matchup, your odds are 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808. That’s about 9.2 quintillion to one. If you have a little basketball expertise, those odds “drop” to 1 in 120.2 billion, according to the NCAA website. However, that second number has a lot of uncertainty.
Since 2011, the typical NCAA tournament bracket has consisted of 63 games. The field starts with 68 teams. Eight of them play in “First Four” games, which occur before the tournament’s first round, and which reduce the field to 64. Just about every bracket ignores those games, leaving 63 games to pick. Raising two to the power of 63 gives you that 9.2 quintillion number above. To help you understand the scale of a quintillion, that’s the same as saying a billion billions. So your chances are 1 in 9.2 billion billions of picking a perfect bracket, assuming a 50-50 split on each matchup.
How much is 9.2 quintillion, though? According to scientists at the University of Hawaii, the Earth has about 7.5 quintillion grains of sand. The odds of picking one of those grains of sand at random and having someone correctly guess which grain of sand are 23 percent better than the odds of flipping a coin and ending up with a perfect bracket.
2024 College Basketball National Championship Odds – Top 10
| UConn Huskies +520 | Purdue Boilermakers +720 |
| Houston Cougars +750 | Arizona Wildcats +1225 |
| Tennessee Volunteers +1275 | North Carolina Tar Heels +1750 |
| Auburn Tigers +1875 | Marquette Golden Eagles +2200 |
| Iowa State Cyclones +2200 | Alabama Crimson Tide +2300 |
The number 1 in 120.2 billion came from NCAA.com’s average user pick accuracy for all 32 of the first-round games over five years, so 160 games per user, weighting the picks by seed differential. They concluded that the average player has 66.7% accuracy for an average game. The odds of a perfect bracket with that chance of success in each game was about 1 in 120.2 billion, or about 70 million times better than reducing each game to a coin flip.
So, how perfect has a bracket ever been? The record for the longest verifiable streak of correct matchup picks in an NCAA tournament bracket dates back to 2019 and went 49 games. When 3-seed Purdue took down 2-seed Tennessee, 99-94 in overtime, in the second game of the Sweet 16, the last bracket went bust. A man from Ohio picked the whole tournament correctly into the Sweet 16. That number was an outlier, though. In 2023, the last verifiably perfect bracket ended in just the 25th game, when 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson upended 1-seed Purdue. In 2022, the first Friday of the tournament busted the last bracket as 11-seed Iowa State upset 6-seed LSU. In 2021, the last perfect brackets went south on the 28th game thanks to a host of upsets.
Because of the volatility of the field of 68 teams, while picking a bracket is a fun pastime, it’s not a place where you want to bet heavy. There are simply too many X-factors involved with a group of young men in their late teens and early twenties for you to put down a lot of money on their chances of winning six games in a row, with each one bringing more pressure than the one before.
2024 March Madness Schedule
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| Round | City | Venue | Dates | Host |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First Four | Dayton, Ohio | UD Arena | March 19 – 20 | University of Dayton |
| First/Second | Brooklyn. N.Y. | Barclays Center | March 22 -24 | Atlantic 10 Conference |
| First/Second | Charlotte, N.C. | Spectrum Center | March 21 – 23 | University of North Carolina at Charlotte |
| First/Second | Indianapolis | Gainbridge Fieldhouse | March 22 – 24 | IUPUI / Horizon League |
| First/Second | Omaha, Neb. | CHI Health Center | March 21 – 23 | Creighton University |
| First/Second | Pittsburgh | PPG Paints Arena | March 21 -23 | Duquesne University |
| First/Second | Salt Lake City | Vivint Smart Home Arena | March 21 – 23 | University of Utah |
| First/Second | Spokane, Wash. | Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena | March 22 – 24 | University of Idaho |
| First/Second | Memphis, Tenn. | FedExForum | March 22 – 24 | University of Memphis |
| East Regional | Boston | TD Garden | March 28 – 30 | Boston College |
| South Regional | Dallas | American Airlines Center | March 29 -31 | Big 12 Conference |
| Midwest Regional | Detroit | Little Caesars Arena | March 29 – 31 | University of Detroit Mercy / Oakland University |
| West Regional | Los Angeles | Crypto.com Arena | March 28 – 30 | Pepperdine University |
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2024 March Madness Locks
NCAA Men’s Basketball: 2024 March Madness Locks | College Basketball Odds
Before Tuesday night, the Creighton Bluejays had an 0-6 all-time record against #1-ranked teams. In fact, they’d never even managed to lose by just single digits to a top-ranked program. That changed when the #15 Bluejays got up on UConn by double digits in the first half and pressed that advantage all the way to an 85-66 win. The Bluejays (20-7, 10-6 Big East) had a 23-point lead with 10 minutes left in regulation before the Huskies (24-3, 14-2 Big East) went on a run to trim that lead to 10. Creighton’s defense held, though, holding UConn scoreless on five straight possessions. The Huskies were perhaps due for a letdown after rolling then-#4 Marquette by 28 points just three days earlier. Let’s take a look at some teams that are emerging as locks for March Madness as you put together your NCAAB betting strategy for one of wagering’s biggest events.
South Carolina Gamecocks
Even though the Gamecocks are about 30 spots below Saint Mary’s (CA) in the NET rankings, South Carolina has fewer losses, and their strength of record is well above what the Gaels have managed to put together. Some of this has to do with the fact that South Carolina plays in the SEC while the Gaels are in the West Coast Conference, a league that basically features the Gaels, the Gonzaga Bulldogs, and a bunch of tomato cans, especially after the departure of BYU for the Big 12. They reached #11 in the nation and built a seven-game winning streak in the SEC to get to the top of the standings before hitting a two-game setback. It will be interesting to see if their win-loss record settles back to where the NET and KenPom rankings indicate they should be, or if the metrics-based rankings fail to match reality here.
Kentucky Wildcats
It’s hard to imagine an NCAA tournament without coach John Calipari’s latest youth movement in the Big Dance. The Wildcats were playing themselves down into the NIT until they went to Auburn and punched the Tigers in the mouth with a 70-59 road win. The key was remembering how to play defense, an issue that has plagued Kentucky all season long and got even worse in the middle of January, when the extended slump happened. Between November 10 and February 13, they only held one opponent below 65 points. They bounced back by holding Ole Miss to 0.87 points per possession and then limited Auburn to 0.88. That kind fo defense will not only get Kentucky into the Big Dance, but it will help them make a deep run.
Arizona Wildcats
When the NCAA tournament committee came out with its first top-16 rankings, they indicated that they didn’t consider Arizona on par with the other candidates for the last 1-seed. All the Wildcats did in response was take Arizona State to the woodshed, rolling by 45. Jaden Bradley has found his scoring touch, with a season-best 14 points at Colorado last weekend and then a career-high 21 points with five assists against Arizona State.
San Diego State Aztecs
It looked like last year’s Final Four team might crash out of the tournament altogether this year, but they followed up an overtime loss at Nevada by beating two teams who should make the NCAA tournament in Colorado State and New Mexico – and beating them both by double figures. The defense limited CSU to 11 points after the intermission, and they held New Mexico to 35.5% shooting and 0.92 points per possession despite the fact that the Lobos have the top offense in the Mountain West.
Dayton Flyers
DaRon Holmes II is filling up the stat sheet to make up for his disappointing game against VCU. Against Duquesne, he put up 24 points and 11 rebounds, and then he dropped 29 and 10 on Fordham. Thanks to UMass stopping Richmond, Dayton is back in first place in the Atlantic 10 standings. If Dayton can hang on there, they shouldn’t need to win the A-10 tournament to get an at-large bid.
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