The 2026 men's Final Four is officially upon us, giving college basketball betting one last big event to start April.
Ahead of the Final Four, as we have been doing for weeks, RotoWire.com used the AI tool Gemini to predict the March Madness bracket for the 2026 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. We broke the tournament out by round, along with the percentage of times each team won throughout the 100 simulated results.
AI Picks 
Midwest
South
How We Got Here
The top-seeded Arizona Wildcats, the Big 12 regular-season and tournament champion, ended their 25-year Final Four drought by defeating No. 2 seed Purdue 79-64 in Saturday's West Region final. In Indianapolis, Arizona faces another top seed (Midwest Region winner Michigan) on Saturday evening. The Wolverines trounced No. 6 seed Tennessee, 95-62, in the Elite Eight on Sunday.
Top online sports betting apps have the 
Wolverines favored at anywhere between -120 and -128 on the moneyline, with Arizona's price hovering between +100 and +106.
The other national semifinal features No. 3 seed Illinois, which erased an early 10-point deficit to defeat Big Ten rival and No. 9 seed Iowa 71-59 in Saturday's South Region final. The Illini square off this Saturday against second-seeded UConn, which came back from an even bigger hole (19 points) to stun Duke, the East Region's top seed, 73-72 on Sunday.
The college basketball odds have pegged the Fighting Illini as favorites, with a spread between 1.5 to 2.5 points depending on the operator.
According to our AI projections, the Michigan Wolverines are projected to win the tournament.
Final Four Projections
Saturday's early game (6:09 p.m. Eastern, TBS and truTV) pits a power in the 
UConn Huskies against Brad Underwood's team that has rolled through the Big Dance.
Illinois has won its four NCAA Tournament games by a combined margin of 78 points. Coach Dan Hurley's Huskies have won their four tourney games by 32 points, including Sunday's incredible buzzer-beating, 73-72 victory over Duke in D.C.
Come Saturday evening, our projections have 
Illinois reaching the program's first National Championship game since 2005. That was also the most recent Final Four appearance for the Illini.
DraftKings Sportsbook has the Huskies as underdogs by -2.5 points, the best price UConn backers will find as of Monday morning.
In the second game on Saturday, two No. 1 seeds collide.
Dusty May's Michigan Wolverines absolutely shellacked an overmatched Tennessee team on Sunday afternoon, bludgeoning the SEC power in a 95-62 final that wasn't as close as the scoreboard indicated.
Arizona enters Saturday's Final Four on a 13-game win streak and Michigan's run launched in the NCAA Tournament after the Wolverines lost to Purdue 80-72 in the Big Ten title game. That's the same Boilermakers team that Lloyd's squad beat by 15 points over the weekend.
Still, our projections show Michigan having the upper hand in Indy. The Wolverines are projected to pull off an 81-79 victory to advance to Monday's title game.
Such a result would fall in line with the Final Four betting odds posted by BetMGM Sportsbook for Saturday's tilt. With that operator, 
Arizona is getting 1.5 points as of Monday morning.
National Championship Prediction and Projection
In what would be an All-Big Ten title game, our projections have the Michigan Wolverines winning the program's second national title (and first since 1989) over the Illini.
AI projections show May's team pulling off a 78-73 win over Illinois on Monday in Indy. If that result were to happen, it would avenge the program's 0-4 record in title games since that '89 team, led by head coach Steve Fisher, won it all.
In our projections, Michigan had the highest national championship win percentage, at 31% (see our interactive graphic above for how often each team won thew title out of 100 simulated tournaments).
At bet365 Sportsbook, Michigan is the slight favorite to win it all at +165 odds, followed by Arizona (+175), Illinois (+400) and UConn (+600).
