There are just three games left in the 2025 NCAA Tournament, and just four teams are left standing in San Antonio, Texas.
The Final Four is made up solely of No. 1 seeds, with Auburn, Florida, Duke, and Houston remaining in the hunt for a national championship.
Duke (-110) is the betting favorite to be the last team standing, but the team with the longest odds, Auburn (+575), isn’t exactly an underdog.
Each of the four teams has a very strong fanbase behind them, but it appears that America has a runaway favorite as the team they’re cheering on the rest of the way.
BetOnline, the popular online sports betting site, put together a map based on geotagged X data on Sunday night, tracking tweets, hashtags (i.e., #GoCoogs, #WarEagle), and direct keyword phrases (i.e., “Go Houston”) from all over the nation, with over 130,000 tweets being tracked.
The results? Well, they’re pretty shocking.
According to the data, 42 of the 50 states are rooting for the Cougars to cut down the nets, with Auburn getting love from four states (Alabama, Ohio, Wisconsin, Washington), and both Duke (Maine, North Carolina) and Florida (Florida, Hawaii) getting two states each.
Duke is easily the most-hated team left in the field right now, as they’re only comparable with teams like Kansas, North Carolina, and UCLA in terms of prestige and history.
Here’s what BetOnline’s Jimmy Shapiro had to say about the eye-popping data.
As you can see from the map, the vast majority of the country is rooting for Houston… but in a Final Four that’s filled with #1 seeds, why is this the case? Because they are playing Duke, who is without a doubt the most “hated” college basketball team in the country (they are like the New York Yankees). Houston has also never won a college basketball championship, and probably has the best shot of the remaining teams to take down the Blue Devils due to their defense.
Auburn has also never won, however, they aren’t playing Duke in the semi-final, and outside the SEC states (who are more like rivals) there really isn’t a big incentive for the average basketball fan to root for them.
Florida is practically a big blue blood program that isn’t really liked outside its state either. So ultimately, college basketball fans are just left hoping someone can take down Duke, who is looking extremely tough right now. (Maine is rooting for Duke because it is the home state of Cooper Flagg).
Houston and Duke are set to tip on Saturday, April 5, at 7:49 p.m. CT on CBS. Florida and Auburn will play in the game directly preceding the Cougars’ and Blue Devils’ much-anticipated matchup, while the national championship game is scheduled for Monday, April 7.
