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2025 March Madness Odds Analysis

2025 March Madness Odds Analysis

Who is the most probable team to win the title, and are they overpicked or underpicked in pools?

March 19, 2025

THE STRAIGHT BET
2025 March Madness Odds Analysis

Here’s some more information for you to help you make your bets and put your March Madness bracket together, an odds analysis. Will explain what it is and how to use it.

Don’t forget to check out strategies for putting your bracket together along with the Futures Report!

Best of luck over the next few weeks!

-Anish

NATIONAL TITLE

Below, you’ll see five tables, one for the title winner, and one for each of the regional winners.

Seed/Team are self-explanatory, but, I’ll go through the other three fields.

True Odds: These are the true odds of that team winning, based on the de-vigged odds from a major sharp book (Pinnacle). Since it’s from a sharp book, they don’t adjust for money, and incorporate all of the models/information out there, so, it is the best representation of that team’s chance of winning. So, Duke has a 19% chance of winning the title.

% Picked: This is how often the team is picked to win the title (or the region) on the major pool websites. So, Duke has been picked to win in about 27.9% of brackets.

OP/UP: Aka, Overpicked/Underpicked. This is the difference between the two previous categories. If it’s a positive # or green, then it is underpicked in relation to their true odds, and vice-versa for overpicked. So, taking our Duke example, they’re overpicked by 9%.

How-to-use: I’d use this for two main purposes. First, to find the teams that are most probable to win that you might not consider. For example, Gonzaga has a 10% chance to win the Midwest. Higher than all but two teams, so, you might consider pushing them forward even if you hadn’t already. Second, to stay away from overpicked teams. For example, 66% of people are picking Duke to make the Final Four, even though they only have a 49% chance of making it, so, you’re not going to gain much by picking them. On the flip side, I’d look for underpicked teams, like, Texas Tech. They aren’t being picked much, but have a relatively high chance to win the West.

Note: I haven’t included anyone beyond the 10 seeds for the title, but, the only two teams of note beyond that are North Carolina (0.7% chance to win and 0.3% picked), and Colorado State (0.5% chance to win and 0.1% picked).