Morning Coffee: What are the odds of building a perfect March Madness 2025 Bracket?

A very Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all who celebrate! 

One of the best weeks on the annual sports calendar has arrived.

The NHL playoff races are heating up, the F1 season is officially underway, the MLB season is about to begin, and it seems like all anybody wants to talk about this morning is green beer and March Madness brackets.

Hopefully, the luck of the Irish is on your side as you attempt to fill out a winning entry.

One word of advice – don’t spend too much time on it.

A perfect March Madness bracket is for the dreamers.

Statistical probability is a stranger to their dreams.

Every year, I’m blown away by both the optimism and the conviction of the “expert” office pool bracket builder.

It’s been six years since a perfect bracket made it past the first round of the NCAA men’s tournament.

There’s never been a perfect bracket that made it past the Sweet 16.

Nonetheless, the “expert” office pool bracket builder is just waiting for the opportunity to explain to you how this is the year that they’ve discovered the ultimate path to perfection.

And all it will take is that one green checkmark next to that initial game prediction for us to be flooded by those nearly identical social media posts we see every year.

“Off to a good start.”

Transparently, I love the enthusiasm.

Unfortunately, I’m the kind of guy who tells it how it is.

Statistically, the odds of an experienced bettor building a perfect bracket are around one in 120 billion.

Forgive me if I’m not interested in investing inordinate amounts of time attempting to predict the exact outcome of a tournament that could come down to a stressed out 21-year-old bricking free throws in a high-leverage situation.

It doesn’t appeal to me.

That doesn’t mean I don’t love the spectacle of the NCAA basketball tournaments.

It also doesn’t mean I don’t think there are opportunities to make a profit betting on futures and specific game outcomes.

I’d just prefer to make every moment more with FanDuel and spend a little less time listening to the expert office pool bracket builder.

The one piece of advice I will give you is that if you can accurately predict which team will eventually be crowned champion, it will go a long way towards building a bracket that could be good enough to win your office pool.

Over the next 24 hours, you’ll hear a lot of chatter about the sleeper teams with upset potential that could make a Cinderella run in the tournament.

It’s important to remember that while we’ll see at least a handful of early upsets, it’s usually the best teams that go the deepest in the tournament.

While there’s always a chance they go down early, it’s more likely than not that teams like Duke and Florida will make deep tournament runs.

If you can accurately predict two or three teams that make it to the Final Four, it might be enough to give you a shot to win your office pool.

If that doesn’t work, at least we all have that one expert office bracket builder who can give us their locks.

This is the Morning Coffee for Monday March 17th, 2025.

What Are The Odds Of A Perfect March Madness 2025 Bracket?

Building a winning March Madness bracket isn’t easy.

Predicting the most likely Final Four teams is a good place to start.

Remember, anybody who accurately predicts the title winner will be guaranteed six checkmarks on their March Madness bracket.

With so much focus on potential upsets and Cinderella stories, it’s easy to forget that most NCAA basketball tournaments are won by one of the top teams.

On the men’s side, the Duke Blue Devils are an obvious favourite to win the national title.

Led by projected 2025 NBA Draft first-overall pick Cooper Flagg, the ACC champion Blue Devils finished the season atop the AP poll.

While he missed the final two games of the ACC tournament with an ankle injury, Flagg is expected to be a full participant in the NCAA tournament.

Duke is the favourite to win it all at +310 this morning.

Per the FanDuel traders, 22.24 per cent of the handle on the men’s tournament title winner is on the Blue Devils.

They’re also one of only four teams with shorter than +1900 odds to win the men’s tournament.

Florida is a close second choice at +400 – down from +700 over the weekend.

Per the FanDuel traders, the Gators have been the most popular pick to win the title over the past 24 hours, accounting for 40 per cent of the handle in the NCAA men’s champion market.

Duke and Florida are joined by Auburn and Houston as the four teams with shorter than 19-to-1 odds to be crowned NCAA champions.

The top five most popular picks to win the men’s tournament in terms of handle are Duke, Florida, Auburn, UCONN, and St. John’s.

One more interesting note from my guy Evan Render: Michigan State is the most popular bet to reach the Final Four at FanDuel.

On the women’s side, UCONN and South Carolina are co-favourites to win the title at +270 this morning.

Per the FanDuel traders, a whopping 33.76 per cent of the handle is on the Huskies to be crowned champions.

The Gamecocks account for 29.41 per cent of the handle.

UCONN and South Carolina are joined by UCLA, Texas, USC, and Notre Dame as the top six choices to win it all.

It would be a major surprise if one of those six teams didn’t go on to be crowned the women’s champion.

The five most popular picks to win the women’s title in terms of handle at FanDuel are UCONN, South Carolina, Notre Dame, USC, and UCLA.

NC State and Duke are both +3500 to win the title.

Then there’s TCU and LSU rounding out the top 10 choices at +3600 and +5000, respectively.

Beyond those 10 teams, every other team is 100-to-1 or longer to win the NCAA women’s title.

On the men’s side, I built my bracket around Duke and Florida making deep tournament runs.

The same goes for UCONN, South Carolina, UCLA, Texas, USC, Notre Dame, and TCU on the women’s side.

Do you think you have the formula for a winning March Madness bracket?

Hit me up @Domenic_Padula on X and let me know.

A FanDuel Best Bet For Monday Night

While everybody is locked in on the NCAA tournament, the NBA regular season continues tonight with a trio of games on TSN and TSN+.

The list of games includes the Los Angeles Lakers trying to string together back-to-back wins as a 9.5-point favourite against the visiting San Antonio Spurs.

The good news is that TSN+ subscribers can watch live.

The bad news is that it doesn’t tip off until 10:40 PM ET.

In terms of a FanDuel Best Bet, I’ll go with a traditional two-team parlay and pair the Lakers to win outright with the Toronto Maple Leafs to beat the Calgary Flames outright at -121.

I’ll also lock in another two-leg parlay and pair the alt over 5.5 goals in tonight’s game between the Columbus Blue Jackets and New Jersey Devils with the Houston Rockets to beat the Philadelphia 76ers outright at -123.

Finally, give me a Same Game Parlay with Nikita Kucherov to record 2+ shots on goal and the Tampa Bay Lightning to beat the Philadelphia Flyers outright at -113.

Hopefully, we can start off the week with a 3-0 sweep.

Have a great day, everyone!