Duke early title favorite at 2027 Final Four in Detroit

INDIANAPOLIS -- A national championship game and Final Four replete with transfer and freshman-filled rosters opens the door for plenty of surprises before the 2027 Final Four tips off in Detroit next April.

Michigan restocked on the fly with transfers Yaxel Lendeborg (UAB), Elliot Cadeau (North Carolina), Morez Johnson Jr. (Illinois) and Aday Mara (UCLA) driving the Wolverines to an eighth national championship game appearance. Michigan also lured transfers in Nimari Burnett (Alabama, Texas Tech), Roddy Gayle Jr. (Ohio State) who played significant roles for the 2025-26 Wolverines.

Most Wolverines teammates thought he was crazy when Will Tschetter sent a group chat to tell teammates he had arranged to shoot at Michigan Stadium to prepare for the infamous cavernous backdrops at the Final Four. If Michigan can book a return trip to the 2027 Final Four, they might also be able to get a couple shots 42 minutes down the road in Detroit beforehand.

As the 2026 edition wraps, Michigan (+800) follows only Duke -- +700 at FanDuel -- in oddsmakers early projections for the next Final Four.

Lendeborg is a graduate student but the Wolverines are proven capable of competing at the championship level and head coach Dusty May has now been to a Final Four with two programs (FAU).

Free agency -- well, the transfer portal -- in college basketball isn't going away, which means programs' expectations and bookmaker projections carry a higher level of volatility.

Duke is expected to lose National Player of the Year Cam Boozer to the draft but has another stellar incoming recruiting class one year after on-and-done Cooper Flagg took the Blue Devils to the Final Four.

Arizona's top freshmen, Koa Peat and Brayden Burries, are not locks to return and Big 12 Player of the Year Jaden Bradley is not easy to replace. But the Wildcats are third on the 2027 national title board at +1200 followed by 2025 national champion Florida (+1300) and 2025 runner-up Houston (+1400).

Michigan State coach Tom Izzo expects the core of his roster to remain intact. That has the Spartans at +1500 narrowly ahead of UConn and Kansas (+1600).

Maybe you aren't quite ready to embrace the turnstile nature of roster-building in college basketball, but Michigan embraced the name tags required approach and put together an almost unbeatable team.

"The way we choose to look at it, we're going to bring in really, really good guys that are high achievers, that want to do it the way we want to do it," May said.

"And when the Oklahoma City Thunder won the championship last year and I'm friends with Coach (Mark) Daigneault and a lot of people in that organization. I wasn't judging them because Shai Alexander was drafted by the Clippers or because they signed Isaiah Hartenstein as a free agent. I thought, "Wow, those guys played beautiful basketball, that's a great team, that's a real model for young players to watch, a group that obviously cared about each other, that played the game the right way, that represented their organization, their city, their families, their last name.'

"Whatever the rules are, we're going to go at it, but our job is to put a competitive roster/team on the floor that represents Michigan the way we think they deserve to be represented."

--Jeff Reynolds, Field Level Media