Best Ever March Madness Bracket
While the highly anticipated NCAA lightning-round competition was gearing up for its March Madness action, Bodog sat quietly courtside, keeping your seat warm and taking plenty of notes for the sportsbook.
The NCAA’s annual tournament holds a singular appeal for basketball fans, owing largely to its single-game elimination format. This approach is naturally a high-risk wager for each side in every match. Performance on each day matters, so even the smallest of oversights could potentially leave a bettor empty-handed.
The online bracket for March Madness is by far the most popular way to make predictions and bet on the tournament. Over the coming weeks, basketball betting fans at Bodog will be testing their skills in a March Madness bracket challenge where we compete with our friends, colleagues or complete strangers to see who can make the most accurate calls.
The unpredictability of March Madness makes this quite the task, but that doesn’t stop millions from having a go each year, and often coming out richer for doing so.
The Closest Ever Perfect Bracket
As of the 2021 tournament, there have been no verifiable instances of anyone correctly predicting the outcome of every single game from the First Four through to the National Championship match.
This may seem surprising given how many of us spend hours pouring over stats every time the NCAA Tournament comes along, but when you look at the odds for a perfect March Madness bracket, it begins to make sense.
Excluding the play-in matches, there are 63 games played during the tournament, each with two possible outcomes. To calculate the odds, you would need to multiply 2 by itself 63 times, giving you 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 different possible outcomes.
For comparison, the odds of being hit by lightning at the exact same time as you’re eaten by a shark are 1 in 1,874,033,500,000, which is 4.9 million times more likely.
So far, the closest anyone has come to making all the March Madness bracket predictions correctly was an Ohio man back in 2019. He managed to get every single game right all the way up to the Sweet 16, with 49 correct predictions in total.
Betting on March Madness In 2022
March Madness brackets aren’t the only way you can make predictions on the NCAA’s legendary tournament. Here at Bodog, we’ve got odds for every March Madness betting market you could want, including individual games, futures, and props. To help you make your picks, here are some key details about the main contenders in 2022.
March Madness Favourites
Right now, Gonzaga is the favourite to win March Madness with odds of +350, although this position isn’t as strong as it was just a couple of weeks ago, having drifted from -200. This is despite them beating the San Francisco Dons 81-71 to make it into the WCC title game.
Next up is the Arizona Wildcats with odds of +650 from Bodog, closely followed by the Kentucky Wildcats on +700. Both teams have seen their odds steadily shorten over the last month, starting out in the plus-thousands before surpassing +800 in mid-February.
On the other hand, third-ranked favourites, the Baylor Bears, have fallen out of favour since the start of the year, drifting their way to +1200 odds.
March Madness Star Players
It’s during March Madness that many up-and-coming NBA stars have the opportunity to show us their court skills. Having done a little digging, Bodog’s sportsbook can now give you the heads-up on the top NCAA players to watch during the 2022 tournament.
Jabri Smith Jr. – Forward, Auburn Tigers
Jabri Smith Jr. is the son of former NBA player, Jabri Smith, and the cousin of Kwame Brown, who you’ll likely remember as the first overall pick in the 2001 NBA Draft. At 6ft 10in, Junior is a giant of a man, and a natural talent on the court. After managing to score upwards of 20 points in 12 of his recent seasonal games, he has been widely tipped to be a top draft pick himself at the next recruiting frenzy. Before then, he’s still got some work to do to get his No. 4-seed team to the top.
Chet Holmgren – Centre, Gonzaga Bulldogs
At 7 ft, Chet Holmgren stands head and shoulders above even Smith Jr. Despite his slow start this year, but has quickly come into his own. He’s also a contender for the first pick in this year’s NBA Draft after averaging 14.5 points and 9.6 rebounds per game. Being a key part of the No. 1 seeded team in this year’s March Madness, Holmgren is a player you will want to keep your eye on.
Other future star players to look out for include:
- Jaden Ivey – Guard, Purdue Boilermakers
- Keegan Murray – Forward, Iowa Hawkeyes
- Johnny Davis – Guard, Wisconsin Badgers
- Paolo Banchero – Forward, Duke Blue Devils
- Kofi Cockburn – Centre, Illinois Fighting Illini
March Madness Venues
This year’s March Madness games will take place in 14 different venues across the country. The Final Four and National Championship games will take place at Tulane University’s Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.
Download Bodog’s March Madness Bracket
We live for March Madness here at Bodog, which is why we have once again tasked ourselves with producing our own downloadable March Madness bracket 2022 challenge. The NCAA bracket can be printed and shared with the basketball enthusiasts in your life – if only to assess who between you can make the most accurate. NCAA March Madness bracket predictions.
How to Make Your March Madness Bracket Predictions
To complete the online bracket for March Madness, look at each of the first-round games and write the March Madness bracket names of the teams you think will win in the next section. Repeat this until you arrive at the National Championship game, where you predict which team will be crowned the winner of the NCAA tournament.
March Madness is a breath away, and with several exceptional schools taking part, it’s going to be another tight tournament. Get your NCAA March Madness bracket completed at Bodog Casino before you miss out, and watch as your predictions sink or swim with each knockout round.