College basketball odds, futures: 2 bets to win the national championship that I like right now

Happy opening week of college basketball to everyone who has spent the offseason convincing themselves this is finally the year their team figures it out. The transfers fit, the freshmen are ready, the coach loves the depth, and there is still time to believe the exhibition problems were just things the coach wanted to work on. Enjoy this part.

Last season ended with Michigan beating UConn 69-63 for the national championship while making two 3-pointers. All that offensive talent, months of arguing about how good the Wolverines actually were, and they finished the job on a night when the jump shots barely showed up. If you followed along with my championship preview, you know where I landed on Michigan: The Wolverines were really, really good. Apparently, they didn’t need to make jump shots to settle that argument.

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Now we get to do it again, with new rosters, new reasons to get carried away and, in the most 2026 fashion, basketball fans have become part-time lawyers attempting to figure out if their newest 28-year-old addition will get to play.

Here are a couple of futures wagers I like.

Duke Blue Devils: How to bet them

Imagine waiting all offseason for college basketball to return, opening a futures article and getting told to bet Duke. Groundbreaking stuff. I’m passing on the favorite, but the roster deserves a little attention before I try to explain the fun stuff.

We have Duke No. 1 on both offense and defense in our preseason CBB projections. Patrick Ngongba II and John Blackwell already give head coach Jon Scheyer a pretty comfortable place to start, and now he gets to put 7-foot-2 freshman Joaquim Boumtje Boumtje next to Ngongba without having to keep both of them under the basket.

Boumtje Boumtje reclassified to get here early, and against Kansas he hit the second-half 3-pointer that put Duke back in front. He finished with nine rebounds and held his own against older players. Ngongba had 28 points and 10 rebounds, Blackwell added 23, and the freshman got to…

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Author : Corbie Craig

Publish date : 2026-11-02 15:27:00

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