Sizing Up The Early ACC Basketball Odds For 2017-18

Welcome to the Heights, Martin Jarmond - where the rebuilding of Boston College basketball is one of your most challenging and important tasks. BC has to overcome a lot of issues to crawl back to competitiveness in hoops - not the least of which is the fact that every year, they face a brutal schedule, and have many quality programs to leap over if they’re going to be competitive again.

The odds for the 2017-18 NCAA Basketball championship have been posted at topbet.eu, and they’re a stark reminder of the daunting challenge BC faces again next season.

The Eagles are one of the longest shots listed, at +50,000 to win the whole thing. BC is joined at this level by George Washington, Buffalo, Vermont, and St. Bonaventure.

At the top end of the chart, three ACC teams are among the four favorites for next season: Duke (+1000), UNC (+1200) and Louisville (+1200).

Notre Dame, Virginia and Florida State all are in the Top 20 at +2000, +2600 and +3000.

Miami wraps up the ACC’s representation of 7 teams in the top 25 at +4000.

Even outside of those top 7, there are other teams expected to be strong. Syracuse at +8000 and Virginia Tech (+10000) are projected by the oddsmakers to be good enough to be in the mix for an NCAA tournament spot.

The teams that join BC in being projected a little further down the national rankings:

Clemson +25,000
Wake Forest +25,000
Georgia Tech +30,000
NC State +30,000
Pittsburgh +30,000

That said, they’re all significantly better odds than BC’s.

This is going to be a critical year for Jim Christian in his first year under a new AD. To make it a success, he’s going to have to outperform the odds.