The 2025 NCAA Tournament is up and running, and the results are in: Duke and Florida — in that order — are the most popular picks to take home the national championship. CBS Sports’ bracket games officially locked Thursday with the start of the First Round, and the No. 1-seeded Blue Devils were the only team to earn more than 25% of picks to win the title.
Florida, the second-most picked team, was the only other team to reach a 20% threshold.
Unsurprisingly, the No. 1 seeds accounted for the four most-picked title-winners — but in an order that may surprise. No. 1 overall seed Auburn was the third-most picked at just 15.11% and the final No. 1 seed, Houston, which was the third overall No. 1 seed according to the committee, came in at 10.08%.
Here’s a look at the ten most-picked teams and the percentage of brackets that had each as their national champion.
St. John’s, the selection committee’s lowest-ranked No. 2 seed, finished as the most-picked No. 2 seed to win the title. Kentucky, the third-lowest No. 3 seed per the committee’s seed list, was the most-picked No. 3 seed.
The SEC had two of the four most-picked teams in Florida and Auburn and accounted for 45.06% of all predicted champions in CBS Sports brackets as well. That nearly doubled the ACC, more than tripled the Big 12 and was nearly six times more than entries predicting a winner from the Big Ten.
| SEC | 45.06% |
| ACC | 28.07% |
| Big 12 | 12.83% |
| Big Ten | 7.80% |
| Big East | 5.00% |
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