The Iron Bowl of Basketball absolutely lived up to the hype. Auburn jumped out in front. Alabama fought back in the second half with some massive shots from Mark Sears. Auburn closed with the kind of run — 8 makes on its final 10 shots — that reminded any doubters that this is, in fact, the best team in basketball.
Auburn is now the outright favorite to win the national championship, with +325 odds at BetMGM.
Saturday’s win over Alabama was Auburn’s 14th Quad 1 win so far this season. The Tigers have 4 Quad 1 games left on the schedule. They’ll have a chance to surpass the 17 Q1 wins last year’s national champ, UConn, had all season.
The Huskies had 17 Q1 victories during their run to the title in 2023-24.
Kansas led the nation with 17 Q1 wins during the 2022-23 season. (UConn, the national champ that year, finished with 12 Q1 victories.) Kansas also led the nation in Q1 victories (16) during its national title season in 2021-22. Baylor led the country (13) during its title-winning season in 2020-21.
There’s a possibility the Tigers enter the NCAA Tournament with more Q1 victories already than any of the previous 4 national champions had during their respective title seasons.
During ESPN’s weekend coverage of the IBOB, it was suggested that SEC teams might actually find their own conference tournament more grueling than the NCAA Tournament. And it’s not that far-fetched. The SEC has become a murderer’s row for everyone. And that will likely pay dividends once March Madness begins. There may not be a more battle-tested team in the country than Auburn.
But does that guarantee that a national championship will be won by the SEC? Perhaps not.
There are 1 or 2 teams who will have something to say come March…
Here are a handful of trends I’m buying and/or selling in college basketball right now.
Take: Auburn is the best bet to win the national championship
Bruce Pearl’s group took 59 of 60 first-place votes in this week’s AP poll. You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who would go against the Tigers right now. And that’s fair. Auburn has a head-to-head win over 2 of the other 4 teams inside the AP poll’s top 5, both of which came away from home.
But Auburn’s price at BetMGM implies a level of certainty that seems a little foolish a week removed from a 9-point loss in its own building. Auburn could very well win the national championship, but Bart Torvik’s model forecasts just a 16.4% chance to do so.
And if you trust Torvik’s forecasting — I do — Houston becomes an easy team to back.
According to Bart Torvik’s projections, the Cougars have an 18.1% chance to win the title. At BetMGM, Houston is priced at +900 to win it all.
And I’ve been on Houston already. In this space last week, I suggested backing Houston to win the Big 12’s regular-season title when the Cougars were -165 at FanDuel. After publication, Arizona lost a 3-point road game at Kansas State and then lost at home to Houston by 4 points.
Now, the Cougars are -500 to win the Big 12 at FanDuel.
Houston has won 17 of its last 18 games, with the only defeat coming by 1 point to Texas Tech in overtime on Feb. 1. Houston has an overtime road win at Kansas and now a road win at Arizona. While Kelvin Sampson’s squad did lose to both Auburn and Alabama in nonconference play, they fit the national champion criteria as a team with a top-20 offensive and defensive rating in KenPom.
With a veteran rotation that has played a ton of basketball together and one of the most torturous defenses in all of college basketball to go against, Houston checks all the boxes you want from a title contender.
And Saturday’s win in Tucson — a very tough place to play — was convincing. The Cougars trailed by 7 midway through the second half and then held the Wildcats without a field goal for more than 6 minutes to completely flip the game and go up 7 themselves.
The win was Houston’s 11th consecutive victory on the road, which represents the longest road winning streak in the country.
Houston has underperformed against its seed expectations over the last 2 seasons, with Sweet 16 exits as a No. 1 in each of the last 2 tournaments.
In Saturday’s early bracket preview from the tournament selection committee, Houston was a 2-seed in the West Region alongside top-seeded Florida, 3-seed Kentucky, and 4-seed Michigan.
Since Villanova’s win as a 2-seed in 2018, a No. 1 seed has won the title in 4 of the last 5 seasons. Could Houston buck that trend? Potentially. And the number on the board at BetMGM is too good to pass up right now.
Verdict: SELL
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