NCAA Tournament Best Bets, Game Picks & Futures (2025)

From picks against the spread to futures and more, our 2025 NCAA Tournament betting guide has you covered through the madness.

March 24, 2025 - by Jason Lisk

Welcome to our NCAA Tournament Best Bets, picks, and futures hub for 2025.

This article will provide our subscribers with game picks and analysis for the 2025 NCAA Tournament (Men’s and possibly some Women’s picks too), plus any other postseason tournaments like the NIT or College Basketball Crown event in Las Vegas.

Pending Picks Available To Subscribers

We’ll update the settled pick results by noon ET the following day.

Game Picks (0)

• Check back! Sweet 16 & NIT Picks will be posted here.

Futures and Props (3)

• Future: Team A to win 2025 NCAA National Title (published Mon March 10)
• Team Prop: Seed No. X as Highest Seed To Make Sweet 16 (published Tue Mar 18)
• Team Prop: Seed No. Y as Highest Seed To Make Sweet 16 (published Tue Mar 18)

See All Pending Picks & Writeups

Settled Picks

• Colorado State (+8) vs. Maryland [WIN]
• Duke (-12) vs. Baylor [WIN]
• Illinois (-2) vs. Kentucky [LOSS]
• Oklahoma State (+9.5) at SMU (NIT) [WIN]
• Tennessee (-5) vs. UCLA [WIN]
• Drake (+7) vs. Texas Tech [LOSS]
• Drake/Tex Tech Under 127 Points [LOSS]
• Robert Morris (+22) vs. Alabama [WIN]
• Colorado State (-2.5) vs. Memphis [WIN]
• North Carolina (-2) vs. Mississippi [LOSS]
• Troy (+11.5) vs. Kentucky [LOSS]
• Connecticut (-5.5) vs. Oklahoma [WIN]
• South Florida (+18.5) vs. Tennessee – NCAAW [LOSS]
• UCLA-Utah State Under 144.0 Points [WIN]
• Texas A&M-Yale Under 139.5 Points [LOSS]
• Kansas (-4.5) vs. Arkansas [LOSS]
• Loyola-Chicago (-2.5) at San Jose State (NIT) [WIN]
• North Carolina (-4.5) vs. San Diego State [WIN]
• Georgia Tech (-6) vs. Jacksonville State (NIT) [LOSS]
• Indiana to miss NCAA Tournament (+205) [WIN]

Settled Pick Writeup

Here’s an example of the write-up and analysis included with each game and futures pick.

Colorado State (+8) vs. Maryland [WIN]

• • • Tip-off: Sunday, March 23 @ 7:10 pm ET
    • Location: Seattle, WA
    • Pick Posted: Sunday, March 23
    • Analysis: Continuing to ride the Colorado State run.
    • We’ll duplicate part of our Colorado State comments with the previous pick: We rode Colorado State to the Mountain West title future in our Conference Tourney picks and see no reason to jump off now.
    • Since expanding to a 10-man rotation by adding 6’11” Nikola Djapa and reducing 6’9″ freshman Kyle Jorgensen’s minutes, Colorado State has a +21.7 average Game Score over 11 games. They dominated Utah State and Boise State in the Mountain West tournament, leading by 24 and 25 points with 10 minutes left before late-game margins narrowed in garbage time. They got into foul trouble inside early against Memphis but were still able to come back and outscore Memphis by 15 points in the second half when back at mostly their full starting lineup.
    • While we have concerns about Maryland’s front line here, and Mbembe needs to stay out of foul trouble, we think this is still too many points for a team playing as well as Colorado State with the current lineup.

See All Settled Picks & Writeups

NCAA Tournament Best Bets Methodology

Every year in the weeks leading up to the NCAA Tournament, our team spends 100+ hours analyzing every all the NCAA tournament teams, for both betting purposes and for our NCAA Bracket Picks product.

Most importantly, we look well beyond season stats and computer power ratings in performing our research. Our goal is to uncover informational angles and anomalies that the vast majority of bettors and analysts are likely to miss. Some examples are:

• • • Injury Impacts: Teams that have played much better or worse at full strength vs. shorthanded, and what their current status is.
    • Lineup Changes: Coaching decisions to alter player rotations midway through the season that meaningfully altered a team’s performance since.
    • Performance Against Certain Styles of Play: Identifying teams that struggle against fast-paced offenses, elite three-point shooters, or defensive schemes they rarely face.
    • Strength of Schedule Impacts: Separating teams with inflated metrics from facing overall weak competition, from battle-tested teams that the public is likely underrating.

This process uncovers useful insights that we can apply to analyzing all kind of NCAA Tournament bets, from point spreads and totals to futures and March Madness props.

March Madness Picks Track Record

While past performance never guarantees future results, our approach to handicapping March Madness has delivered strong returns over the last three years (2022-24):

• • • Game Picks: 90-64-1 (58.4%) for +20.5 units of profit
    • Futures and Props: 23-24 (48.9%) for +21.9 units of profit

Futures bets returned a 47% ROI over that span, mainly on account of hitting plus-odds picks such as conference tournament winners at +300 or higher and Sweet 16/Final Four props.

That success continued in this year’s conference tournaments, where our futures best bets returned another +10.85 units of profit.

We do not expect to sustain that level of ROI long-term, and an unprofitable March Madness season is bound to happen sometimes. But those are the results so far, and you can make your own decision whether or not to pay for our picks and analysis in 2025.

Pending NCAA Tournament Game Picks

Here are our currently pending best bets for game picks, with our most recently published picks and writeups at the top.