The Virginia Cavaliers have dominated the ACC this season, winning 17 of 18 games to claim the regular-season conference title for the third time in five years. Despite their regular-season success, however, the Cavaliers are just +250 second-favorites on the odds to win the 2018 ACC Tournament at sportsbooks monitored by OddsShark.com.
Top-seeded Virginia capped the best conference record in school history with a narrow 62-57 win over Notre Dame as an 8.5-point home favorite Saturday and is idle until Thursday as it awaits the winner of Wednesday afternoon’s Louisville vs. Florida State matchup at the Barclays Center.
The Duke Blue Devils locked up second place in the ACC standings with Saturday’s decisive 74-64 win over rival North Carolina as 7.5-point home favorites and sit as the +200 favorites on the ACC Tournament odds.
The Blue Devils struggled at times during the final five weeks of the regular season, going 7-4 straight up and against the spread over their final 11 contests, including a 65-63 home loss to Virginia as 3.5-point chalk on the college basketball point spreads. But Duke has enjoyed enormous success at the ACC Tournament. With last year’s tournament championship win, the Blue Devils now have raised the hardware in 11 of the past 19 years.
Further down the ACC Tournament odds, the defending national champion Tar Heels sit at +700, ahead of Miami at +1000, while Clemson joins Virginia Tech at +1200.
After claiming regular-season titles in each of the past two years, the 11-7 Tar Heels finished the current campaign in a four-way tie for third place in the standings but are set as the No. 6 seed in this year’s tournament after coming up short on tiebreakers.
UNC awaits the winner of Tuesday’s Syracuse vs. Wake Forest first-round matchup and is unbeaten in 11 combined dates with the Orange and Demon Deacons.
If UNC is to claim its second tournament championship in three years, it will need to get past a potential third-round clash with the Hurricanes, who tallied a stunning 91-88 buzzer-beater victory over the Tar Heels as 10-point road underdogs on Feb. 27.
That win over UNC proved to be the difference maker in the tiebreaker that handed the 11-7 Hurricanes the No. 3 seed. Miami now rides a four-game SU win streak into the ACC Tournament and is 4-2 SU in its past six games as betting underdogs.
North Carolina State leads the middle of the pack at +1400 odds to win the ACC Tournament, followed by the Seminoles at +1600, Syracuse at +2000, Notre Dame at +2500 and the Cardinals at +3300, while Wake Forest trails at a distant +10000.
