Men's Naismith Player of the Year Odds 2025: Latest odds, favorite, and history

NCAA Basketball: NCAA Tournament East Regional-Alabama at Duke - Source: Imagn

The Naismith Player of the Year is awarded annually to the most outstanding college basketball player of the season. UCLA's Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then known as Lew Alcindor, won the first iteration of the award in 1969. This season, there are two clear contenders, with one standing out as the likely winner.

Naismith Player of the Year odds 2025

Two players have emerged as the likely options to win the award. Duke's Cooper Flagg is the favorite, but Johni Broome is a contender. According to Sports Interaction, these are their odds.

Cooper Flagg (Duke) -195
Johni Broome (Auburn) +150

These are the only two players being given odds because no other player is viewed as a realistic contender.

Who is the favorite to win the Naismith Player of the Year Award?

Cooper Flagg is the favorite to be named the Naismith Player of the Year this season. He is the runaway favorite to be the first pick in the 2025 NBA draft and has established himself as the best player in college basketball.

Through 36 games, Flagg, a dynamic player on offense and defense, has averaged 18.9 points, 7.5 rebounds, 4.2 assists, 1.3 blocks and 1.4 steals per game. He has led his team to a Final Four appearance in March Madness. Duke awaits the winner of Sunday's game between Houston and Tennessee.

The only other realistic contender is Johni Broome. He averages 18.5 ppg, 10.8 rpg, 2.9 spg, 2.1 bpg and 0.9 spg.

Broome and the Auburn Tigers will play the Michigan State Spartans on Sunday at 5:05 p.m. ET for the chance to take on Florida in the Final Four.

Naismith Player of the Year Award winners last 5 years

The Naismith Player of the Year award went to the same player for the last two seasons, and someone new will get the crown this season. These are the five most recent winners.

2024: Zach Edey (Purdue)
2023: Zach Edey (Purdue)
2022: Oscar Tshiebwe (Kentucky)
2021: Luke Garza (Iowa)
2020: Obi Toppin (Dayton)

About the author

Alexander O'Reilly is a journalist at Sportskeeda from Kingston, Ontario with over seven years in the field at companies including SenShot, RVBlogger, Monarch Media, WordAgents, GSeC LLC, and IGC.

His favorite college team is Duke, and his favorite sporting memory was Duke winning March Madness in 2010. JJ Redick was Alex's favorite college player when he was young but more recently, Caleb Williams gets the nod. As the Chicago Bears are Alex's favorite NFL team, this was a perfect match.

Alex's proudest moment came when he was interviewed by a radio station in Ottawa on his opinion on recent moves by the Ottawa Senators, which gave him a confidence boost and the knowledge that he could succeed as a writer.

Aside from sports, Alex likes to spend his time playing games. He is also very passionate about running and strives to improve at the half and full marathon distances.

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Edited by Joseph Schiefelbein