Creating a winning NCAA men's basketball bracket for the postseason tournament, commonly referred to as March Madness, is an incredibly hard task. With 65 teams to analyze and a tournament known for upsets, the task may seem daunting. Despite this there are several rules that will help you be more successful at filling out your tournament bracket.
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Difficulty:
Challenging
Instructions
1
Never pick a team because of sentimental or emotional reasons.
2
Do not pick a 16-seeded team to beat a number one-seeded team. While it may occur in the future, it never has in the entire history of the tournament.
3
Pick at least one 15-seeded team to beat a 2-seeded team. The history of the tournament demonstrates that there is a very good possibility that will occur at least once.
4
Research as many teams as possible. History indicates that the most consistent teams, regardless of seed, tend to do the best in the tournament.
5
Research the size of each team. Taller teams tend to have an advantage against smaller teams.
6
Research the conferences that are represented in the tournament. A team may have a strong record coming into the tournament, but if they have played weak competition during the regular season, it may not bear any significance.
Tips & Warnings
Athleticism is also an important factor to use when picking teams to fill your bracket, but this is much harder to determine and may fall into the realm of subjective opinion.
Road records are also very important to watch. If a team does not play well away from home you should be weary of picking them as they play farther from their school.
Great research tools can be found on the MSNBC and ESPN Web sites right before and during the tournament (see Resources below).
Nothing in this article guarantees that you will pick your teams successfully. These tips are general guidelines based on the past history of the tournament.
The nature of the tournament leads to many upsets. Any team can win any given game. While you may pick certain teams after a significant amount of research there still exists a possibility that those teams will lose.
