How To Win Your March Madness Pool

The Madness has begun. The teams are picked. You are sitting in front of your brackets. Hating these play-in games. Trying to figure out who is going to survive it all. Why? Because winning your NCAA bracket pool is a crown you can wear for a year. And the money. There’s always the money.

So, here at y’all.com we did some research and here are 10 tips that y’all may want to consider going into the Big Dance:

1. Don’t take a 16.  #16 UMBC beat #1 Virginia in 2018. This is the first time this has ever happened. You wanna be right once, or often?
2. #15 seeds — they’re 8-132 all time against No. 2 seeds.
3. Twenty-one 14 seeds have upset 3 seeds since 1985, giving them a 21-119 record all-time. That equates to a 15.0 win percentage. However no #14 has advanced the last 3 tourneys.
4. One #13 seed upset a #4 seed in the 2019 NCAA tournament: UC Irvine knocked off Kansas State, continuing a streak of success for the lower seed a year after two 13 seeds advanced for the first time since 2008.Twenty-nine 13 seeds have upset 4 seeds since the NCAA tournament field expanded in 1985, giving them a 29-111 record all-time. That equates to a 20.71 winning percentage.
5. #12 v #5 – If there is a first round upset, usually it’s that a #12 seed beats a #5.
6. The top four seeds in a given region have all made it to the second weekend just 10 times in the past 26 years.
7.  All four one seeds have only made the Finals one time in the history of the tournament.
8. #8 and #9 seeds matchups- Not sure? Flip a coin. Throw a dart. These matchups are usually difficult to call.
9. The 5th seed and seeds #9-#16 have never won the Championship. The #5 seed has been and lost 3 times. The others never been.
10.  In 28 of the 34 modern day NCAA tourneys, there have been between 10 and 16 upsets each year (where the winning team was at least two seeds worse than the losing team).
11.  In the past 35 years,one team that has finished with the top defense has ever reached the national championship, and only one has ever been to the Final Four:Virginia, the 2019 winner. What’s more, 25 of the 35 either didn’t make the tournament or lost in the first two rounds, including Virginia who dropped to a #16 in first round in 2018.
12. And finally, from the folks at NCAA.com : Okay, this one may not be the best picking strategy, but if you want to pick based on mascot showdowns, dogs really are your best friend. They boast a 37-26 record against cats in the tournament.