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Men's college basketball conference tournament projections, best bets: Picks for every major league

Men's college basketball conference tournament projections, best bets: Picks for every major league

New York Times11-03-2025

It's less than a week until Selection Sunday and which means that the high-major conference tournaments are getting underway. And while we usually associate Cinderella teams with mid or low-major schools, don't be surprised if we see some unlikely runs amongst the nation's strongest conference. Remember NC State last year?
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My college basketball projection model uses advanced metrics, adjusted for opponents, from more than 10 years of data to create a projection for each team. From there, I simulate each college basketball tournament one million times to get projected odds for each team to secure an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Overall record 2022-2024: 19-43, +10.1 units, +28.9% ROI
ACC: North Carolina +2900 (risk 0.1 units)
American: UAB +700 (risk 0.25 units)
American: Tulane +2000 (risk 0.1 units)
American: Temple +3500 (risk 0.1 units)
Big East: UConn +410 (risk 0.5 units)
Big East: Marquette +600 (risk 0.25 units)
Big West: UC Irvine +180 (risk 1.0 units)
Big Ten: Purdue +750 (risk 0.25 units)
Big 12: Arizona +950 (risk 0.25 units)
Big 12: Baylor +4000 (risk 0.1 units)
Conference USA: Louisiana Tech +800 (risk 0.25 units)
Conference USA: Western Kentucky +2500 (risk 0.1 units)
Ivy: Princeton +1100 (risk 0.1 units)
MAAC: Mount St. Mary's +1000 (risk 0.1 units)
MAC: Ohio +800 (risk 0.25 units)
MEAC: Howard +1700 (risk 0.1 units)
MEAC: North Carolina Central +1700 (risk 0.1 units)
Mountain West: Utah State +425 (risk 0.5 units)
Mountain West: Boise State +550 (risk 0.25 units)
Mountain West: Nevada +2000 (risk 0.1 units)
SEC: Tennessee +600 (risk 0.25 units)
SWAC: Bethune Cookman +750 (risk 0.25 units)
SWAC: Alabama State +800 (risk 0.25 units)
WAC: Seattle +500 (risk 0.25 units)
Below is the projection for the conference tournaments starting this week. Conference tournament projections that started last week can be found here. Projected win% is how often the team won the conference tournament in my simulations. Odds are from BetMGM.
(Photo of Samson Johnson: Joe Buglewicz / Getty Images)

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