March Madness odds 2022: Projecting the teams with best chances to make each round, win NCAA Tournament

The 2022 NCAA Tournament field has officially been announced, which means it is time to start filling out brackets. 

March Madness is always a challenging period for college basketball fans hoping to put together the closest brackets they can to perfection — or at least top their tournament pools.

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But with 68 teams and 63 games to be played, there is a lot of information fans will need to process in order to determine the best look for their brackets. Always a major factor: betting odds. Already, there are odds out for each team to win their first games and to advance to the championship and Final Four. 

In addition, Sporting News is introducing a projection model that looks into the field and which teams are the most likely to come out of each matchup. The model is based on a composite ranking from the Pomeroy and Sagarin ratings, two of the top college basketball ranking systems, along with offensive and defensive stats and ratings based on teams' game-by-game results throughout the 2021-22 season. The model then runs a Monte Carlo simulation of the tournament 20,000 times and derives the outcomes from the result of each simulation.

Here is a glimpse at what the current odds and the model say about the 2022 March Madness field. All odds are courtesy of Sports Interaction.

March Madness odds 2022

Gonzaga very nearly completed the perfect season last year. Oddsmakers and the model like the Bulldogs to finally hoist the trophy this year.

According to Sports Interaction, Gonzaga has a +300 chance of winning the national championship, with Arizona possessing the second-best odds at +600.

Kentucky checks in at second despite entering the East region as the second seed. The region's top seed, Baylor, has the sixth-best odds at +1200.

EXPERT PICKS: DeCourcy (Arizona) | Bender (Kentucky) | Fagan (Gonzaga) | Pohnl (Arizona)

Here's a breakdown of the best odds for each seed in the tournament.

The oddsmakers are clearly bullish on teams in the East in spite of the threat of Gonzaga looming in the Final Four.

The Sporting News model has a similar outlook, though it has each of the top four seeds as the teams with the best odds to win the championship as opposed to Kentucky breaking up the group.

Here's a look at the model's projected top five, with the percentages converted to odds.

Along with the oddsmakers, the model is high on Gonzaga to win the championship, with few teams even close to the Bulldogs.

A big reason for Baylor and Kentucky being lower than Arizona and Kansas? The model doesn't like either team's chances of getting past Gonzaga in the tournament. In a theoretical head-to-head matchup, it has Gonzaga beating Baylor 63.2 percent of the time, and Gonzaga winning against Kentucky in 64.6 percent of their matchups.

REGION BREAKDOWNS:
West | South | Midwest | East

NCAA Tournament odds to advance by region

Here is a look at the odds for each team to advance out of each region, as well as the projected run for each team based on Sporting News' model.

East

This is the only region where the No. 1 seed does not have the best odds to advance in each round. While Baylor has the biggest betting advantage to reach the second round of the tournament, Kentucky takes over as the favorite from that point forward to have the best odds to advance to the Sweet Sixteen and beyond.

One of the more interesting teams in this region is Virginia Tech, which has the best odds of reaching the Final Four of any team seeded below sixth. It is nearly even with its first-round opponent, Texas, in the odds to reach the Round of 32.

The model isn't quite as high on Virginia Tech as the bookmakers, and sees Texas instead as the fifth-most likely team to win the title in this region. The model really likes San Francisco to pull the upset over Murray State, and has the Dons as one of only seven teams with more than a 20 percent chance of reaching the Sweet 16.

UCLA is looking like a stronger bet in the top five than Purdue, but the model continues to believe the top two in the region stand above the rest of the group.

Midwest

The top two seeds in this region stay about where they would be expected in terms of odds to advance to the next rounds, but the rest is a bit chaotic. Despite being the fifth seed, Iowa has better odds of reaching the Final Four than both the No. 3 Wisconsin and No. 4 Providence.

Providence overall does not match up well in the field. It has the same odds to reach the Final Four as the eighth-seeded San Diego State and has worse odds than both Iowa and No. 6 LSU.

While the model thinks Providence is likely to escape its first-round matchup, it agrees that the Friars are not particularly likely to move far, giving them only the fifth-best chances of reaching the Sweet 16, and drops them even lower for reaching the Elite Eight.

Iowa remains one of the top contenders overall in the field, with the third-best chances of reaching the Elite Eight, Final Four and championship game of any of the teams in the Midwest. Sixth-seeded LSU is another sleeper pick that could potentially make some noise.

South

The South features a little bit of chalk and a little bit of chaos. While the first five teams are all the heaviest favorites to advance to the Final Four, No. 11 Michigan quietly has the sixth-best chances to reach the national semifinals at +1603, significantly better than its first-round opponent, Colorado State (+3907).

The rest of the middle is relatively even with the seventh through 10th seeded teams all between +2100 and +3000, and there aren't too many underdogs with huge odds to move far.

The model predicts at least two upsets will happen in the first round, favoring No. 10 Loyola Chicago over No. 7 Ohio State and No. 11 Michigan over No. 6 Colorado State. Between the two teams, it sees an easier path to the Final Four for Michigan, though it thinks Loyola is the slight favorite to advance to the Elite Eight.

Among the top five teams, Houston is seen as a better bet to reach the Final Four and win a title than second-seeded Villanova or fourth-seeded Illinois, while Arizona and Tennessee remain the two toughest contenders.

West

The West isn't too wild. The top five each have the best odds to reach the Final Four, in order, and it isn't until the eighth through 13th seeds that any sort of re-shaping starts to occur.

The biggest underdog the oddsmakers like here is No. 9 Memphis, which at +2412 has better odds to reach the Final Four than both No. 7 Michigan State and No. 8 Boise State.

There is a huge gap in odds for Gonzaga and the rest of the field, per the model. It doesn't see much of a difference between Duke and Texas Tech as the runner-up, favoring the Blue Devils slightly outside of the chances for each team advancing to the Final Four.

Though the model favors Michigan State to win, it does see Davidson as a team that could be an early upset contender in the first two rounds of the tournament.