2025 NCAA tournament picks: Predictions, odds, lines for South Region, with Michigan trying to avoid a 5 vs. 12 upset

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The stat was making the rounds after Auburn didn’t make the championship game of the SEC tournament: No team has lost three of its last four games before the NCAA tournament and won a national championship.

And yet, Auburn still was a somewhat surprising pick as the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament.

Auburn stumbled late in a very tough league, which might open things up for the other teams in the South region. We’ll wait on Auburn’s first-round opponent until Alabama State and St. Francis play in the First Four at Dayton on Tuesday (we’ll be waiting to see if San Diego State or North Carolina play Ole Miss on Friday, as well), but here are the rest of the picks for the first round in the South, with all the odds from BetMGM:

Louisville (-2.5) over Creighton

The first game of the first round Thursday is a good one. Louisville seems very under-seeded, but that’s part of playing in a bad ACC. Still, since Dec. 14 the Cardinals are 21-2 and one of the losses came to Duke in the ACC tournament. Creighton has been a very good team too, and 7-foot-1 Ryan Kalkbrenner will be a problem for the Cardinals. But I won’t hold it against Louisville that the ACC was down. The Cards advance.

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Yale (+7.5) over Texas A&M

Yale has become the Ivy’s best program, and this season it dominated the league. Yale was 16-1 after Dec. 22. Texas A&M is a good team, but it lives off offensive rebounding (the best offensive rebounding percentage in the nation), and yet Yale is pretty good on the defensive boards. The Ivy League has been pretty good in the first round of the NCAA tournament, going 9-6 against the spread over the past 15 tournaments (per Matt Eisenberg’s Tournament Binder). Texas A&M could make a run into the second weekend, but this one isn’t going to be easy.

Vladislav Goldin helped lead the Michigan Wolverines to a Big Ten tournament championship. (Photo by…

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Author : Frank Schwab

Publish date : 2025-03-17 14:59:00

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