Most bettors believe UConn will get another big win on their way to history
There have been many stats to prove UConn's dominance over the last two NCAA tournaments.
The one that might be the most impressive is already well known to bettors.
It's hard to cover the spread game after game. The spread is the great equalizer, giving a No. 16 seed a 26.5-point head start in the first round. If a team keeps covering the spread, oddsmakers adjust and keep pumping up the spread to force the betting public to pay a tax for taking a hot favorite. That's how UConn ended up as an 11.5-point favorite in a national semifinal game against Alabama, which was an unusually high spread for that round.
And no matter how high the spreads have gotten, Connecticut has cashed tickets for bettors.
UConn has played 11 NCAA tournament games the past two years and they have covered the spread 11 times. The Huskies go for another 6-0 tournament against the spread against Purdue on Monday night, and most bettors believe they'll cover the 7.5-point spread at BetMGM.
UConn is preferred by bettors
UConn, unsurprisingly, is a popular bet for Monday's national title game.
For the final game of the season, 64% of bets and 73% of the money bet on the point spread at BetMGM is on UConn. The spread has shifted as a result. It opened at UConn -5.5 and was -7.5 as of Monday morning.
That says a lot about UConn's dominance. Purdue had a great season, going 34-4 with national player of the year Zach Edey. Purdue also has the chance to pull off going 6-0 against the spread in the tournament while winning a championship, which is fairly rare. And yet, the spread is high for a championship game.
According to Sports Odds History, the UConn-Purdue spread would be just the third since 1999 to be above seven points for a national title game. North Carolina was favored by 7.5 in the 2009 title game against Michigan State and covered, and in 2002 Maryland was -8 over Indiana and covered.
It's a huge spread for the final Monday night of the college basketball season, but nobody has been able to cover against UConn in the NCAA tournament since 2022.
The list of recent perfect ATS champions
Going 6-0 against the spread in the tournament on the way to a championship isn't easy. Usually a champion was a high seed and as such failed to cover at least one big spread.
Here are the 6-0 ATS champions this decade: 2006 Florida, 2009 North Carolina, 2014 UConn, 2015 Duke, 2016 Villanova, 2018 Villanova and 2023 UConn. That's an impressive list. We'll get a new addition to it unless UConn wins by seven points or fewer on Monday night.
The most impressive part of UConn's run against the spread this season is the Huskies haven't often been in danger of not covering. Alabama came the closest, keeping the game competitive before the Huskies covered the 11.5-point spread (the line closed at UConn -10.5 in some spots) by 2.5 points. In the second round, UConn covered against Northwestern by four points. In the other three games UConn covered by double digits.
Maybe Purdue can cover the large spread on Monday night. The Boilermakers have covered every other spread since losing to Wisconsin in the Big Ten tournament. Bettors aren't anticipating it. UConn has been good to them for two straight tournaments, so there's no reason to stop backing them now.
