March Madness is here! That means an estimated 50 million people will start filling out their brackets. Maybe you’re one of them. However, what if you don’t know how to? You’ve always wanted to participate but didn’t know the first thing on how to do it. Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered with my guide to filling out a March Madness bracket teaching you how to do it, and tips for picking teams!
Don’t forget to fill this one out on SGPN!
Filling Out A March Madness Bracket – How To, Tips, And More!
What Is March Madness?
Let’s start with the basics. Before you can learn how to fill out a March Madness bracket, you may not even realize what March Madness is. March Madness is a college basketball tournament that dates back to 1939 and currently consists of 68 teams and seven rounds.
The winner of the tournament is crowned the NCAA Basketball Champion for that year. The teams participating are picked by a selection committee and starting now through the end of the tournament you’ll hear all sorts of people give opinions on who they got right and who they got wrong.
However, it won’t change the fact that by the end of the seven rounds, only one team will remain undefeated in the tournament. The tournament is always entertaining. Stakes are high, emotions are running, and these 18 to early twenty-year-olds put everything on the line. Small schools can take down big schools. Upsets can happen, and each team pulls out everything they have to keep winning.
What Are All These Numbers On My Bracket?
Before you can learn how to fill out your March madness bracket, you should probably learn what everything on the bracket is. Regardless of where you go to find or print your bracket, they all look relatively the same. There are four different divisions in each tournament, with 16 teams in each division.
Here’s an example of a bracket from last year. If you don’t follow college basketball, the numbers may throw you off a little bit. The first number, the one before the team name UConn, is their seed. The lower the seed number, the better the team is considered as far as strength. In this matchup, you can see we have a 16th seed over a number one seed.
The other numbers shown aren’t on all March Madness brackets. However, this is the team’s regular season record. For this example, UConn won 31 games and lost three, while Stetson won 22 and lost 12. When it comes to March Madness this doesn’t matter as much. We’ll get into some of the most common upsets in a little bit.
Filling Out Your March Madness Bracket
If you’re worried that you don’t know how to fill a March Madness bracket out, don’t worry. It is very simple. All you have to do is pick which team you think will win each match. Depending on where you’re filling out your bracket, you likely just need to click the team you think will win.
There’s usually a bubble or checkbox to click the team you think will win. once you click their name, they advance to the next round. This continues up until the National Championship, when you’re left with just two teams to pick.
You can also print off a bracket and write it in manually. Every time you pick a team to win, you would just write them on the corresponding line connecting the two teams you’re picking between. If you’re picking through the Sports Gambling Podcast Networks contest, once you open the bracket you’ll see how easy it is.
How To Pick and Who To Pick?
There are many different strategies on how to pick the winning March Madness bracket. The best thing is, you don’t need to know anything about college basketball. I run a March Madness bracket challenge at my work and half of the people filling it out don’t watch.
However, all of them have fun watching the games, knowing they have someone to cheer for! It’s one of the things that makes the bracket challenge so much fun. The games are always much more interesting!
There are plenty of different strategies. One person on my team picks based on the location of the school. Another person picks based on the school name or mascot. One of my coworkers picks all the favorites, while some just pick randomly. I pick with gut feelings.
March Madness Upset Data Tips
One thing about March Madness that makes it so much fun is there are always upsets. There always seem to be teams with a low seed (seeded 10-16) that pull off an upset. However, the average number of upsets in each round gets less and less.
For example, the average upsets overall is 8.5 upsets. The least amount was in 2007 with three and the most was in 2021 and 2022 with 14 each. There’s an average of 4.7 first-round upsets, 3 second-round upsets, and less than one in the next rounds.
The most upsets in the first round were eight back in 2016. However, back in 2000, there was only one. You’ll hear a lot of data and people talk about the 12-seed versus the 5-seed. That’s because this used to be the most common upset. Nobody can really point to why.
Perhaps just saying that it is the most common upset gave enough belief to all those 12th-seeded teams. However, it’s no longer the top upset. The 11-seed over the 6-seed is the most common now. It’s happened 61 different times, good for 39.1% of the time, in the tournament history.
The 12th-seeded team has beaten the 5th-seeded team 35% of the time. The 13th-seeded team has beaten the 4th-seeded team 21% of the time. We’ve seen the 14th-seeded team beat the 3rd-seeded team 14% of the time. The 15th-seeded team has beaten the 2nd-seeded team 11 times.
Finally, the number one seed has been upset by the 16th-ranked seed just two different times. Those have been more recent as well. In the second round, the most common upset is the 7 seed versus the 2 seed. This upset has happened 27 different times.
Tips On How To Pick The Winner This year
Now that the tournament is set, let’s take a quick look at some of the teams that have the best chances of winning. Remember, none of this is an exact science. It’s March Madness and it’s completely unpredictable, which is exactly why anybody can win their bracket challenge!
If you want to hone in on the favorite to win this year then you’ll be picking Duke to ride their way all through the tournament to the championship. They are currently the favorite to win, followed by the next three number-one seeds. Personally, I like Houston a lot this year.
If you want to hone in one of those 11-seeds to beat a six-seed, there are two that really stand out to me. Drake against Missouri, and VCU against BYU. Drake and VCU are no strangers to the tournament and they aren’t strangers to upsets either.
Have fun filling your bracket out and remember that anything can happen in March Madness.
