In a season that saw the No. 1 ranking in the polls shuffle seemingly every week and highly ranked teams get upset every weekend, there's been a noteworthy shift entering the NCAA tournament. Many people are coalescing around either Alabama or Houston to win the national championship.
While Houston, which would play the Final Four in its home city, is the betting favorite, it was Alabama that emerged as the overwhelming favorite among college coaches and NBA scouts.
When we performed this exercise last year, there were 11 different teams selected by the 25 coaches and scouts polled. The year before, there were only three, and in 2019, six. All three years, the eventual title winner received multiple votes, which bodes well for Alabama, Houston, Arizona, Kansas and Purdue.
This season's results land somewhere in between those three polls, with the Crimson Tide as the heavy favorite.
Here are the results of the 25 industry people polled:
