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NCAA Basketball Final Betting Predictions for the 2018-19 Season

Written by on November 9, 2018

NCAAB News and Betting Previews| Xbet.ag
The men’s NCAA Basketball season is already underway for 2018-19, and we’ve already seen the Duke “Dream Team,” led by Zion Williamson, rout Kentucky in their opener. The Blue Devils have what many are calling the best recruiting class in years, and they are already clicking. The expectations on Williamson may be unfair, but they are there, and it will be interesting to see how they respond. However, there’s a lot of basketball to be played between now and the end of March Madness, and there are a lot of other teams to look at when you are putting your sports betting together. Take a look at some of the betting favorites and our predictions for the upcoming campaign.

NCAA Basketball Final Betting Predictions for the 2018-19 Season

Kansas will win the Big 12 and reach the Final Four

Bill Self, the Jayhawks’ coach, does have the ongoing distractions that accompany the FBI corruption investigation that has made its way through the college basketball establishment. However, he also has point forward Dedric Lawson, a 6-9 player who also has elite handles, and a recruiting class that is in the nation’s top 10. The Big 12 is a tougher conference than it has been in years past, but Self has the talent in place to make another run to the last weekend of the best tournament in amateur sports.

Nevada will run the table through the regular season

Caleb Martin, Cody Martin, and Jordan Caroline are all back for Nevada, and five-star recruit Jordan Brown joins the team. Now, the defense could remain the team’s Achilles heel, as we saw in the Sweet 16 when Nevada went down to Loyola-Chicago after running out to a sizable lead. However, few teams in the nation can match what Nevada brings on offense, and they also have the sort of schedule that could leave them undefeated. Will the committee reward that schedule with a top seed, though?

Indiana will win at least a share of the Big Ten title

Romeo Langford joins the Hoosiers as a five-star recruit, and Juwan Morgan returns to join him keying a talented lineup. The play on the point is still an issue, and the Hoosiers still don’t look ready to play lockdown defense, but no one in the Big Ten is emerging as elite at least at this point in the season, so Indiana has an excellent shot to emerge as one of the front-runners, thanks to the arrival of Langford.

Louisville will return to March Madness

Chris Mack is supposed to have a dynamite recruiting class for the Cardinals; the ESPN.com rankings have his group listed ahead of Duke’s. Louisville is one of the NCAA Basketball favorites to win it all in 2018-19. Louisville saw four of their five top scorers leave after last season. However, V.J. King leads a group of talented players coming back, and that terrific recruiting class will help Louisville make it off the bubble this season.

The Big Ten will have ZERO teams in the Sweet 16

Did you know that no Big Ten team has won the national championship since Tom Izzo’s crew did it back in 2000? That streak will continue this year because while the conference has a lot of chippy teams, the star power from recruiting did not go to the Midwest this year. Players like Miles Bridges, Keita Bates-Diop, Tony Carr and Mo Wagner have moved on to the professional ranks, and recruiting did not replace them. As a result, we won’t see them after the first couple of rounds of the NCAA Basketball tournament.

Kentucky will win the NCAA Basketball Championship

It’s true that John Calipari’s one-and-done system is a little different this year, as he has several key freshmen from a year ago returning. Graduate transfer Reid Travis who made it as First Team All Pac-12 twice at Stanford shows up to provide that leadership and experience that the all-freshmen model has often failed to produce for Kentucky.
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