We've reached the Sweet 16, and we're getting closer and closer to crowning a new national champion.
Last year, Walter Clayton Jr. torched the nets for six games en route to a Florida title and was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player for his efforts. Clayton was the 11th guard to win MOP in the last 12 tourneys, with UConn's Adama Sanogo the lone exception in 2023.
But in a year where all four 1-seeds feature dominant play of big men, not elite guard play, could one of these bigs buck the trend and win Most Outstanding Player?
Let's add to our NCAA Tournament futures portfolio and dive into my Most Outstanding Player picks.
NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player Odds
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Yaxel Lendeborg
I'm backing Michigan's Yaxel Lendeborg for Most Outstanding Player
Michigan is the favorite to win the 2026 national championship at 22% on Kalshi.
The Wolverines are the one team I price as an odds-on favorite to make the Final Four from any region of the bracket. Michigan is elite offensively and even better on defense, and in both cases, the reason is its trio of future NBA big men.
Aday Mara is an awesome shot deterrent and defensive menace, and he's a terrific finisher around the rim on the other end. Morez Johnson leads the team in rebounding and is second in scoring, and is quickly rising on draft boards as a prospect.
But Yaxel Lendeborg is really the straw that stirs this team's drink.
Lendeborg is the epitome of a modern positionless basketball player. He's a big man who handles the ball on the wing and defends opposing guards, doing a little bit of everything for this team, a jackknife that simply helps this team win.
Lendeborg ranks top two in Michigan in points, rebounds, assists, threes, steals, and blocks. That's pretty much everything, for those of you counting at home.
The 23-year-old UAB transfer has eight games with 20+ points, seven with double-digit rebounds, and five with 5+ assists. He has seven games with at least four stocks, too, if you prefer the defensive side of things.
Lendeborg fills up the box score in ways almost no one else in basketball does, and he's almost always the most important and highest-impact player on the court for Michigan.
He could be tasked with defending Brayden Burries, Darius Acuff, or Braden Smith in the Final Four, then Kingston Flemings, Keaton Wagler, or Jeremy Fears in the title game, and he'll do that well while also filling up the box on offense, too.
Michigan is my odds-on pick to win the Midwest, and the Wolverines are my pick to win the national title, but even so, there's very little value on their odds to do either of those.
That's why it's worth buying Lendeborg to win MOP.
At 12% on Kalshi (at the time of writing), Lendeborg only has to win MOP in about half of all Michigan titles for that to be a valuable ticket. And though this usually goes to a guard, do we really think Elliot Cadeau is taking this? The truth is that Mara and Johnson are likely buying us value on Lendeborg.
He's my outright pick to win Most Outstanding Player and would be a more than deserving winner — the best player on the best team, at a bargain price.
Pick: Yaxel Lendeborg to Win Most Outstanding Player
The Best of the Rest
Lendeborg is my pick, but we can use this logic to consider a few other names on the board as proxy picks for title wins as well.
- Cam Boozer: The Duke big man is trading at 16%, and with the way he dominates the box score, it's really, really hard to see Duke winning a national title without the surefire NPOY also winning MOP as his crowning achievement. That said, Duke is trading at 18%, which means Boozer has to win POY almost 90% of all Duke wins for that ticket to have value. That's not much of an edge. If anything, you could make a counter case for Isaiah Evans at 2%. He has eight 20-point games and 13 with 4+ 3s, and maybe his hot shooting hits at just the right time.
- Joshua Jefferson: Jefferson is the most intriguing long shot on the board at 2%. Jefferson is Iowa State's version of Lendeborg, a jack-of-all-trades who does a little bit of everything and is the clear best player on his team. Jefferson's injury creates a big question mark, but it's also buying some value. Jefferson only has to win MOP in around a third of all ISU titles, and the Cyclones aren't sniffing a national title unless Jefferson is healthy enough to play his best ball as the star of this team on Final Four weekend.
- Braden Smith: The Boilermakers point guard at 4% looks like a nice value with Purdue at 7% to win the title. The Boilermaker big men would be big contributors in a title scenario, too, but this is a guard's award, and Smith is the all-time assist king and the guy that makes this offense go. He's a great pick if you like Purdue to cut down the nets.
- Jeremy Fears: Similar to Smith, his reputation won't help the cause here, but Michigan State will only go as far as Fears takes this offense. That's probably not a national championship, but if it is, he will be the biggest on-court reason why. There's little edge on Fears at 3% on Kalshi, but he's got long-shot value at +5000 at BetRivers.
