Give yourself a chance

Welcome to full-blown March Madness. The time of the year when the country goes hoops crazy in order to win the office pool, people start ditching school and work in order to follow some team that they couldn’t find on a map and the nation unifies in a full-blown hatred of Billy Packer. 65 teams will play 64 games over the course of the next three weekends, and according to the book ‘March Madness For Dummies,’ the odds of picking a perfect bracket are nine quintillion to one. (That’s a nine with 18 zeros after it or 9,000,000,000,000,000,000 : 1) So how does one go about picking a bracket that will have a chance of winning the above mentioned office pool, especially if they haven’t seen many of the teams playing? Here’s five ways to give yourself a chance.



5-Go with the big men
A lot of so-called experts will say that having good guard play is extremely important in the tournament, because the ball is in those players’ hands so much. And while that is defiantly true that having good backcourt play is nice to have, take a peek at the last four players who were named the most outstanding player of the Final Four. Carmello Anthony (2003), Emeka Okafor (’04), Sean May (’05) and Joakim Noah (’06). All of those guys are either forwards or centers. The reason that big men are so important come tourney time is because there are so few good ones, so when a team does have a talented big guy, they will just keep feeding him the ball. This has become especially true in recent years, when pretty much every decent prospect over 6-10 going to the NBA as soon as possible. That makes the players that do stay in college even more dominant, because there are almost un-guardable. Now a days, a lot of big men want to step out and shoot jumpers, but in the tournament, it is very nice to have a big man who will score and rebound under the basket.

4-Don’t pick too many upsets
Part of the fun of this event is rooting for the little guy, the team that nobody expects anything out of, the George Mason’s of the world. It gives the common fan with no rooting interest somebody to pull for. And while that is great fun, don’t bank on those Cinderella’s to help you win a pool. The random 12 over 5 upset is fine, but if winning a pool is the goal, don’t try to be bold and have a number 9 seed winning the national title. Don’t have your 12 seed that got lucky in round one going all the way to the Elite 8. And never pick a 16 seed to win, because in the entire history of the NCAA tournament, it has never happened. A few high seeds winning are fine, but after the second round, go with the best teams to advance (not always the lower seed though).


3-Look for teams who ended the season on a roll
The tournament is always played in March, and for two teams, the first Monday in April as well. So what a team accomplished in November, December and even January is completely meaningless. For example, earlier this season North Carolina defeated Ohio State 98-89. Does that mean if the Heels and Buckeyes meet again that UNC is an obvious favorite? Well considering that first game was played in the Dean Dome against an OSU team without Greg Oden on November 29, not at all. Take a look at what a squad did during their last ten regular season games and their conference tournament. Are they coming into the tournament on a roll and ready to win six more games or are they struggling to get to the finish line. Teams with high rankings that ended the season slow tend to be the ones that don’t see the second weekend of tournament play.


2-Depth, coaching and game location don’t really matter
Obviously picking a team with a lot of great players that are playing close to home and are coached by a future Hall of Famer is never a bad choice. It’s just that during tournament time, these factors matter less then they do in the regular season. Because each game is nationally televised, the TV timeouts are longer and therefore, teams don’t have to rest their star players as much. With only one day between games, coaching doesn’t play as much of an impact on a team as it would during the regular season. And since all the games are at neutral sites, it doesn’t really matter which team is wearing the road uniform. (Obviously some neutral sites are closer to a teams campus then others, but it still doesn’t play a huge factor in the outcome.)

1-Never pick the favorite
This goes hand in hand with my reason number four. While picking too many upsets can be trouble, so can picking too many favorites. I’ve estimated in years past that about 40 percent of all bracketers (I just made that word up, but it sounds real) pick the number one overall seed. So that means if you also pick that team, you are going to do have to better then pretty much everybody in the opening rounds to even have a chance come Final Four time. And since the number one overall seed rarely wins the thing anyways, why go through the trouble. Pick a team that is either a one, two or three seed, put them in the final against another one of those teams, and hope those squads play well. Just make sure that your not picking the team on the top line on the upper-left of the bracket.



Good luck with your bracketology, and I’ll be providing you with my tournament preview in the next few days.