March Madness 2019: Tips for filling out your NCAA Tournament bracket

What strategies can help you fill out a winning bracket? Here are some simple tricks to follow to help maximize your March Madness.

It’s March, you have your NCAA Tournament bracket in your hand, and you’ve entered every bracket pool you possibly could because this is the year you’re going to get it all right.

There’s just one problem – you look down at your bracket and realize you don’t know anything about most of the teams on there. You know some, sure, but you’re too proud to go with your mom’s strategy of picking teams based on colors or mascots.

Obviously, you’re going to cram prior to Thursday’s games to learn as much as you can about everyone you can (and you won’t find a better place to do that than Busting Brackets dot com!), but what else can you do? Picking teams is an inexact science, after all.

There are a few tips you can follow to help you strategize and optimize your bracket for the best chance at success. Here are the six most important ones:

Do not pick a No. 16 seed to beat a No. 1 seed

I understand this happened last year with UMBC upsetting Virginia and you want to be on the right side of history whenever an upset like this happens again.

Fight the urge. This year is not that year. There’s a reason it took 135 games before a No. 1 seed lost to a No. 16 seed for the first time – the talent and skill disparity between the two is usually quite large. That will be the case this year with how strong the top teams in the country are.

We probably won’t go 135 games until we see another 16-over-1 upset, but chances are we’re not going to see it two years in a row.

Pick at least one No. 12 seed to beat a No. 5 seed

In that same vein, there have only been five NCAA Tournaments since 1985 where a No. 12 seed did not upset a No. 5 seed. It’s the most common upset in tournament history, but one of those upsets didn’t happen last year.

Expect that anomaly to happy two years in a row as well? It won’t. Make sure you throw one or two of these upsets in your bracket.

Upsets happen, Cinderella runs don’t

When picking these upsets, you’re going to be very tempted to have that mid-major or low seed go on a Cinderella-type run. Don’t.

There’s a reason runs like Loyola-Chicago’s last year, VCU’s in 2011, and George Mason’s in 2006 are remembered so fondly – they very rarely happen.

If you want to put a couple of double-digit seeds in the Sweet 16, that’s perfectly fine. But the best teams are the best teams for a reason and, usually, those are the ones left standing at the end of the Big Dance.

Don’t pick a team a year too late

This might be the biggest one. Because you probably didn’t spend a good deal of time this winter watching the SoCon or studying up on the MAC, the upsets you pick will probably be based on schools you’ve heard of before.

As such, when someone sees a Cinderella they remember from last year, it not only rings the familiarity bell in their mind – they actually remember them being kind of good!

However, outside of Butler’s back-to-back national championship game runs under Brad Stevens, teams are rarely able to repeat those special stretches. Loyola-Chicago didn’t even make the tournament after last year’s Final Four berth. Shaka Smart never won more than one game in the NCAA Tournament with VCU in the years following their Final Four run.

Don’t fall into this trap. One of the reasons we love March is that every year, we’re introduced to someone new or a new team. This season won’t be different.

Pick a No. 1 seed to win the national championship

No one likes doing this. Picking upsets and crazy outcomes are much more fun than going chalk. But, if you’re looking to win your bracket pool, you’ll go with a No. 1 seed winning the national title.

In the last 34 national championship games, 47 percent of the teams playing in that game were a No. 1 seed. There have also been nearly as many title games that featured two No. 1 seeds (seven) than games that feature no No. 1 seeds (eight).

They usually cut down the nets, too. A No. 1 seed has won 20 of the last 34 titles. It’s not a guarantee, but this strategy would certainly improve your odds.

Go with your gut!

This is the most important one. Filling out your bracket is fun! March Madness is the best time of the year! Enjoy it.

If you start second-guessing yourself for no reason and changing your picks, you’re inevitably going to get those games wrong. That’s how it always works, right? Plus, if you get one of those wrong, you won’t stop kicking yourself.

Make your picks, stick with them, and go nuts cheering for that underdog you’ve never heard of. It’s March!