How’s the March Madness Odds? Each year, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, known as “March Madness” for the time of year and the chaos that upsets bring to the bracket, inspires millions of people to fill out their own brackets.
No one has ever filled out a perfect bracket, picking every winner of every game. The odds for anyone to pull that off are infinitesimal.
If you were to use simple guessing or flip a coin, without doing any research into the matchups, your odds are 1 in 9.2 quintillion – 9,223,372,036,854,775,808.
Those who know a bit about the game and do some basic research into the matchups can bring their odds down to about 1 in 120.2 billion – 120,200,000,000.
The more you know about the current teams in the tournament and about how college basketball works, the better your odds would be.
However, things happen each year that make even the best research useless. In 2018, 16-seed UM-Baltimore County took down 1-seed Virginia, confounding the betting wisdom that 1-seeds are virtual locks to advance to the round of 32.
Let’s take a closer look at the sheer size of the odds of picking a perfect bracket on the basis of coin-flip thinking, and then look at some of the schools that have the best chance of rolling to a title in the 2025 tournament.
March Madness Odds of Picking a Perfect March Madness Bracket
How big is 9.2 quintillion?
How long would it take for 9.2 quintillion seconds to elapse? Well, each year has 31.6 million seconds. So you’d only need 292 billion years to pass for those seconds to tick by.
Since the Big Bang, scientists estimate that five trillion days have passed. We’d only need to repeat that cycle 1.8 million times to see 9.2 quintillion days pass.
The Earth has a circumference of about 1.58 billion inches. If you walked around the planet 5.8 billion times, you’d have traveled 9.2 quintillion inches.
^If you don’t just guess each pick, don’t your March Madness Odds improve?
Yes, and one method involves researching picks and understanding each matchup. That can bring your odds down to about 1 in 120.2 billion.
Georgia Tech professor Joel Sokol’s research suggests that using a model that correctly picks regular-season games 75% of the time would reduce perfect bracket odds to 1 in 10 billion to 1 in 40 billion. Sokol’s research indicates that even the best models can’t reach a higher accuracy rate of 75%.
^What format does the tournament bracket use?
The NCAA men’s basketball tournament welcomes 68 teams. There are 32 automatic bids given to each conference tournament winner, and the other 36 bids are distributed on an at-large basis by the tournament selection committee, which also seeds the whole field.
Eight of the 68 teams (the four lowest-seeded automatic qualifiers and the four lowest-seeded at-large schools) start their tournament on a Tuesday and Wednesday night at the University of Dayton, for some reason, the “First Four.” Two games take place on Tuesday, and the winners head to first-round showdowns at sub-regional sites on Thursday.
The other two games take place on Wednesday night, and the winners advance to first-round games at sub-regional sites on Friday.
After those four games, the 64-team bracket is complete, and a six-round, single-elimination format begins. The tournament features a total of 63 games, and by raising 2 to the 63rd power (2^63), that’s how we get the number 9.2 quintillion.
^March Madness Odds to Win provided by Xbet Sportsbook
Which teams look like potential champions in 2025?
Auburn Tigers
The Tigers (12-1) have far and away the best starting lineup in the nation, at least on the bases of the lineup rankings posted by EvanMiya.com. Their metrics use efficiency margin, and Auburn starts Denver Jones, Dylan Cardwell, Johni Broome, Chad Baker-Mazara and Miles Kelly. Their observed efficiency margin is +78.4. One of St. John’s lineups is second best, way down at +61.0.
Tennessee Volunteers
The Volunteers (13-0) are getting a spectacular year out of Jordan Gainey. He scored in double figures in four of his first nine contests, and since then he’s turned things up and now has a four-game double-figure streak. That includes a 23-point night against Illinois that included the game-winning score. He also had made multiple three-balls in five games in a row before clanking all four of his shots from distance against Norfolk State.
Iowa State Cyclones
The Cyclones (11-1) have been riding high on the work of Keshon Gilbert, but if college hoops had a Sixth Man of the Year award like the NBA, it might go to Curtis Jones. He has scored in double figures in 10 of the Cyclones’ 12 games and has scored 19 or more in six of the last eight, dishing out five or more assists in four games. He started the season red-hot from distance, knocking down 43.1% of his three-balls in the first nine games, but that has dropped to 23.8% (5 of 21) in the last three outings.
Duke Blue Devils
The Blue Devils (11-2) are the only team to stop Auburn this year, thanks in part to five-star freshman Isaiah Evans, who came off the bench in that game to knock down six three-pointers and total 18 points.
In six of his last seven games, he has scored eight or more points six times, totaling 60 points over that stretch and making 53.8% of his shots from distance. The Blue Devils have won their last four by at least 20 points heading into a Saturday afternoon showdown with SMU.
Alabama Crimson Tide
The Crimson Tide (11-2) will live and die by the three-point shot, and that reliance on outside shooting can make them look all-world, like they did in a rout of South Dakota State.
The Tide went 19 of 55 from downtown in that game, and Mark Sears and Aden Holloway made 14 of those combined, leading Alabama to their 13th 100-point night since the start of the 2023-24 season, a number that leads Division I. What will happen when the shooting cools off during SEC play, though?
Florida Gators
The Gators (13-0) are one of only three undefeated left, but their schedule has been a little on the softer side. Their best victory came against North Carolina, and during the second half of that win, they looked inconsistent. They visit Kentucky on Saturday and Tennessee on Tuesday, and if they can win at least one of those two games, that record will be more legit.
Oregon Ducks
The Ducks (12-2) got absolutely undressed at home by Illinois, 109-77. Kwame Evans Jr had been contributing more going into Big Ten play, but the Ducks have all kinds of questions to answer. The Ducks don’t have much time to process what just happened – which might be a good thing – as Maryland shows up on Sunday.
Kentucky Wildcats
The Wildcats (11-2) might have the best outside shooter in the nation in Koby Brea, who made 49.8% of his three-point attempts last season. This year, that number is 49.4% – but he’s dropped off recently, shooting just 34.9% over his last seven contests. He did start with a red-hot 67.6% through his first six games. As SEC play gets going, he should find his rhythm again.
Marquette Golden Eagles
The Golden Eagles (12-2) rolled over Providence by 28 points in front of the Friars’ home crowd on New Year’s Eve, and that might have been their best game of the season. On defense, they created 22 turnovers and held Providence to 0.81 points per possession. The Friars only shot 40.9% inside the arc and 28.6% from distance. Kam Jones put up 18 points and 10 assists in the big win.
^ONLY ONE REMAINS 😤@Vol_Hoops are your last unbeaten standing 💪 pic.twitter.com/61ZlPH0Jcw
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) January 5, 2025
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