NCAA Basketball: 5 best bets to win 2021-22 national championship

Gonzaga +800 ($100 bet wins $800)

“Really bold of you, Thomas!” “My 95-year-old grandma could have logged onto WynnBET (because she resides in AZ, CO, IN, MI, NJ, TN, and/or VA) and told me there’s a decent chance the favorite wins it all this year!” “Hey pal, do you think Alabama is going to beat Mercer in football this weekend too?” Yeah, yeah. Get over it.

In addition to believing that the Zags are one of the top teams in the country and a major threat to win it, I’m also very confident that those odds will be much improved come to the start of the tournament. Why is that? The answer is two-fold. First, I expect them to be as good as advertised. There isn’t a frontcourt in the country that’s better than Chet Holmgren and Drew Timme. The 7’0”, extremely skilled Holmgren enters his first (and likely only) collegiate season widely regarded as the best player in his freshmen class.

Then paired with him, Coach Few’s team returns one of the best college players from last year in Timme. Even without Jalen Suggs and Corey Kispert, Gonzaga should also be strong at the guard positions and on the wings. The second reason why I think Gonzaga has solid value at +800 is that they have by far the greatest margin for error out of anyone.

Credit to them, the Zags did schedule UCLA, Duke, Alabama, Texas, and Texas Tech for non-conference games. However, two of those games are in Washington, and all of them are on the west coast. After those five games, it should be cupcake city for them as it usually is once the WCC calendar starts. I wouldn’t be surprised if they ran the table again in the regular season, in which case I’m guessing their odds heading into the tournament would be around +250 or +300.

Let’s be pessimistic and play devil’s advocate for a minute, though. Say they lose to Texas or to UCLA in the Final Four rematch and then drop the game to Duke out of respect for the Coach K Farewell Tour. Let’s also say they lose two WCC games. This scenario puts them around 26-4 with multiple top-25 wins and the WCC title.

Even in this unlikely hypothetical, I don’t see the committee handing out worse than a 2-seed to them. They are in such a unique position, being in the WCC, that it makes winning while battling injuries, off-nights, and other concerns that much easier. Gonzaga should be a 1-seed come March, and if they are, the +800 odds given now will be much lower.