How To Win Your March Madness Bracket Pool
The field of 68 is set, and the NCAA Tournament tips off Tuesday night from Dayton with the First Four. Here are a few tips to win your bracket pool.
March Madness Bracket Tips and Odds
First off, let’s say right up front that if we had a sure-fire way to win an NCAA Tournament bracket that we wouldn’t be sharing it and instead would be on a yacht somewhere in the Caribbean.
Also, disregard the First Four for the most part. No brackets include those First Four games in the overall standings – they are play-in games. The First Four was instituted in 2011 basically to allow for a few more at-large bids from the previous field of 64. At least one of the First Four winners has advanced past the first round of the Big Dance every year, though, with VCU reaching the 2011 Final Four.
As an aside, the term “March Madness” for the NCAA Tournament is credited to former CBS broadcaster Brent Musberger, who first used it in 1982. Where did Musberger get it from? It was a term used in the Illinois high school state basketball tournament for decades, and Musberger is from Chicago.
All statistics used here are since the tournament expanded to 64 in 1985.
March Madness Bracket Trends To Know
The NCAA Tournament became incredibly popular both because everyone fills out a bracket in their office or with buddies but also because of the upsets and buzzer-beaters. And there will be upsets, especially in the first two rounds.
However, it’s smart to largely expect chalk by the Sweet 16 and definitely one of the favourites to cut down the nets on Monday, April 8 from U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. While just once since 1985 has all four No. 1 seeds reached the Final Four (1985 with Kansas, Memphis, North Carolina and UCLA), a whopping 21 times a top seed has won the national championship. Nine of the past 12 champions have been a No. 1 seed.
The second-most national champions in that time? A No. 2 seed with five. The third-most? A No. 3 with four. The other champions have been a 4, 6, 7 and 8. A No. 5, oddly, has never won it. While a total of five double-digit seeds have reached the Final Four, none of them advanced past the semifinals. Of the 136 Final Four teams since 1991, just 14 have been seeded seventh or worse.
The College Football Playoff has only featured schools from power conferences thus far. Expect the basketball national champion to come from one of the Power 6 as well: ACC, Big East (not considered a power conference in football but is in basketball), Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC.
The last champion from outside a power conference was UNLV in 1990. Connecticut has won four national titles since then and the Huskies are in the AAC, but they were a Big East team when they won those.
Might also be smart to avoid picking a school west of the Mississippi River. The last school from that region of the USA to win a national championship was Arizona in 1997. With the Pac-12 hugely down this season, the only realistic school with a shot to end that drought is West Region No. 1 Gonzaga. The Zags lost the 2017 national title game to North Carolina, which is their only trip to the Final Four.