March Madness odds are going to include 65 teams when the teams are announced on Sunday, March 14th. You can actually eliminate some of the teams that are not going to be part of March Madness betting right now.
March Madness odds will have 65 teams coming from a list of 331. Since most conferences have tournaments that result in an automatic bid, most of the teams are still alive. Some though are not so let’s look at eliminating some of the teams in March Madness odds. The Ivy League does not have a postseason tournament as their regular season winner gets a bid. That team is almost assuredly going to be Cornell as they can clinch the conference with a win on Friday at Brown. Yale, Penn, Dartmouth and Brown have no chance to win the Ivy League so they are already out. The Big Sky Conference only lets the top six of their nine teams make the conference tournament so that means Eastern Washington, Idaho State and Sacramento State will not be involved in March Madness odds. The Big South eliminates one team from their conference tournament so Gardner-Webb is already out. The Northeast Conference only allows eight of their 11 teams to make their conference tournament so the bottom three teams, St. Francis (NY), Sacred Heart and Wagner will not be in March Madness odds. The Ohio Valley only allows eight of its ten so Southeast Missouri State and Tennessee-Martin are gone. The same thing happens in the Summit League so Southern Utah is out.
Even some of the bigger conferences don’t let everyone in. The Atlantic 10 only allows 12 of its 14 teams in the conference tournament so Fordham and another team are going to be out. The SWAC is similar so Alcorn State and probably Southern will not be on the March Madness betting board. That means 314 teams are left. There are three teams that are ineligible as Centenary, Savannah State and USC will not be part of postseason play.
Most of the other teams in college basketball will be eliminated in the next two weeks as teams that don’t win their conference tournament are going to be out unless they get one of the at-large bids. That is what makes conference tournaments exciting as they are kind of a mini-March Madness with the winners moving on and the losers going home.