Men’s college basketball projections, bets for conference tournaments: SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC and more

Conference tournaments are in full swing, with several automatic bids already decided and 16 more tournaments starting this week. My model has projected chances for all 16 tournaments coming up.

My college basketball projection model uses advanced metrics, adjusted for opponents, from more than 10 years of data to create a projection for each team. From there, I simulate each college basketball tournament one million times to get projected odds for each team to secure an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

Among the more notable projections are Duke being given a whopping 70.6 percent chance of winning the ACC tourney and Akron being favored ahead of Miami Ohio in the MAC. The sportsbooks also have Akron favored ahead of the undefeated RedHawks, so it’s not just me. Akron was 17-1 in the MAC, with the only loss being by three at the RedHawks in early January. Miami is 10-0 in games decided by five points or less, including the last three games to close the regular season, so the numbers prefer the Zips.

Before getting to the projections, here are my best bets for this second week of conference tournaments. My first-week bets featured a Northern Iowa hit in the Missouri Valley Conference at +470, and I have East Tennessee State at +200 in the SoCon final.

2026 conference tournament best bets

Big Ten: Illinois +480 (risk 0.25 units)CUSA: Middle Tennessee +650 (0.1 units)American: Wichita State +320 (0.25 units)Big East: Villanova +650 (0.1 units)Big West: Hawaii +190 (0.5 units)MAC: Bowling Green +1300 (0.1 units)Ivy: Yale -125 (to win 1 unit)

For the tables below, PROJECTED WIN% is the chance my model gives for each team to win its conference tournament entering March 9. The odds, listed for context and comparison, are from FanDuel.