College Basketball: 2027 championship picks
Three national title picks from three bands of our own model, and our favourite in every Division I conference with the runner-up beside it. Every number is our championship probability from a full-season simulation — our read, not a claim about anyone’s prices — and all of them stay on this page until they settle, win or lose.
National championship
- Top pickOpen
Duke
23%Maiden gives Duke a 23% shot at the 2027 national title: the team we rate highest.
Duke tops our board, and 23% is another way of saying that even the best team in the country loses this most years.
- Duke: 22.8% to win the national championship across 200,000 simulated seasons — our 1st-rated team.
- Projects to 29.8 regular-season wins, reaches the tournament in 90% of them and the Final Four in 45%.
- Wins its conference in 65% of simulations, so the title path runs through a league it does not have to escape by luck.
- ContenderOpen
Illinois
5%Maiden gives Illinois a 5% shot at the 2027 national title: a pick from the tier below the favourites.
Run the season two hundred thousand times and Illinois cuts down the net in 5% of them.
- Illinois: 5.1% to win the national championship across 200,000 simulated seasons — our 5th-rated team.
- Projects to 24.9 regular-season wins, reaches the tournament in 64% of them and the Final Four in 18%.
- A tier we could not separate: Houston sits inside our simulation error, so this is a choice between them rather than a verdict on them.
- LongshotOpen
Purdue
2%Maiden gives Purdue a 2% shot at the 2027 national title: a genuine longshot.
2% is small, and it is the honest number: Purdue gets there by winning the games our ratings call coin flips.
- Purdue: 2.4% to win the national championship across 200,000 simulated seasons — our 9th-rated team.
- Projects to 23.8 regular-season wins, reaches the tournament in 55% of them and the Final Four in 11%.
- A real longshot — about one season in 41, and we are not dressing it up as more than that.
Conference championships
Our favourite in each of the 31 leagues, with the team next in line and its number. A conference title is a single-elimination weekend, so even the strongest team in a league loses it more often than its record suggests. Power conferences first; pick yours from the list.
- Atlantic Coast ConferenceDuke65%
Next: Louisville, 11%.
- Big 12 ConferenceArizona34%
Next: Houston, 24%.
- Big East ConferenceConnecticut39%
Next: St. John's, 28%.
- Big Ten ConferenceMichigan41%
Next: Illinois, 18%.
- Southeastern ConferenceFlorida41%
Next: Tennessee, 11%.
- America East ConferenceUMBC42%
Next: Vermont, 28%.
- American ConferenceSouth Florida32%
Next: Tulsa, 28%.
- Atlantic 10 ConferenceSaint Louis36%
Next: VCU, 24%.
- Atlantic Sun ConferenceLipscomb37%
Next: Queens, 28%.
- Big Sky ConferenceMontana St.19%
Next: Northern Colorado, 19%.
- Big South ConferenceHigh Point59%
Next: Winthrop, 18%.
- Big West ConferenceUtah Valley28%
Next: UC Irvine, 18%.
- Coastal Athletic AssociationHofstra25%
Next: UNC Wilmington, 24%.
- Conference USASam Houston St.22%
Next: Liberty, 20%.
- Horizon LeagueRobert Morris21%
Next: Wright St., 18%.
- Ivy LeagueYale47%
Next: Cornell, 15%.
- Metro Atlantic Athletic ConferenceMerrimack21%
Next: Marist, 16%.
- Mid-American ConferenceAkron44%
Next: Miami OH, 25%.
- Mid-Eastern Athletic ConferenceHoward65%
Next: Norfolk St., 17%.
- Missouri Valley ConferenceBelmont28%
Next: Northern Iowa, 19%.
- Mountain West ConferenceNew Mexico34%
Next: Grand Canyon, 24%.
- Northeast ConferenceLIU34%
Next: Mercyhurst, 14%.
- Ohio Valley ConferenceTennessee St.26%
Next: Tennessee Martin, 20%.
- Southern ConferenceEast Tennessee St.29%
Next: Mercer, 17%.
- Southland ConferenceMcNeese St.43%
Next: Stephen F. Austin, 25%.
- Southwestern Athletic ConferenceBethune Cookman23%
Next: Southern, 15%.
- Summit LeagueSt. Thomas43%
Next: North Dakota St., 34%.
- Sun Belt ConferenceArkansas St.20%
Next: Troy, 16%.
- United Athletic ConferenceAustin Peay27%
Next: Central Arkansas, 25%.
- West Coast ConferenceSaint Mary's53%
Next: Santa Clara, 34%.
Common questions
- Who is favoured to win the 2027 NCAA men's basketball championship?
- Maiden rates Duke the most likely champion at 23%. That is our own simulated probability from running the full season, conference tournaments and the 68-team bracket — not a market price.
- Who is favoured to win each power conference in 2027?
- Atlantic Coast Conference: Duke at 65%; Big 12 Conference: Arizona at 34%; Big East Conference: Connecticut at 39%; Big Ten Conference: Michigan at 41%; Southeastern Conference: Florida at 41%. Every other Division I conference has its favourite on the same board, with the runner-up beside it.
- How are these probabilities calculated?
- Every team gets a preseason efficiency rating fitted only on games played before the season starts. We then simulate the whole season two hundred thousand times: each team is drawn a season-long strength offset, every game is drawn from a calibrated win-probability curve, conference tournaments are seeded on the simulated standings, and a 68-team bracket is filled from the results.
- How accurate are preseason college basketball predictions?
- Less accurate than in-season ones, and we measure the gap rather than guess it: our preseason projection carries about 4.4 points more per-team error than the same model in February. Over 2023-26 our conference-title probabilities came in at the rate they predicted in aggregate, with the strongest favourites running slightly overconfident.
- What happens to these picks?
- They stay on this page until they settle in March and April, and they are graded here whichever way they go.
Nothing on this page is betting advice.