7 strategies for casual fans filling out their March Madness bracket
1. Play it safe and pick the favorites.
If you haven't been keeping up with the college basketball year, or are unaware of the sport in general and just like being involved in your office bracket pool, there's nothing wrong with backing the favorites and playing things safe.
While I wouldn't recommend sending all four No. 1 seeds to the Final Four (it's only happened once before in the history of the tournament), if you pick a mix on No. 1, 2, and 3 seeds to make it to the end, and then back Virginia or Villanova as your eventual champion, you'll probably at least make it through the first weekend of the tournament without your bracket getting totally busted.
It's not the most exhilarating way to go about filling your bracket, but spice up your first few rounds with a couple upsets and you'll at least have a rooting interest as March Madness takes over every bar television in America for the next three weeks.
2. Trust in championship pedigree
Rather than picking just the favorites from this year's bracket, casual bracket builders can also use historic tournament pedigree as a tool to fill out their entry.
This year, there are plenty of lower seeded teams that have proven themselves in the past to be tournament powerhouses. No. 5 Kentucky has made the Final Four four times since 2011, and Tom Izzo has led No. 3 Michigan State through the same gauntlet a whopping seven times since 1999.
Perennial tournament contenders UNC, Duke, Gonzaga, and Wichita State also all find themselves without a top seed in their regions this year. If you want to avoid going full chalk with your bracket but still back teams you can trust in the postseason, you could do much worse than picking your favorites among those who have done it before.
3. Pick your favorite stat and follow it to the ends of bracket possibility.
Now we start sliding into the weirder ways of filling out your bracket. When going through team by team, why not select which stats you believe are important in building a championship contender, and work from there?
Are you a fan of three point shooting? Purdue is a No. 2 seed and has the best percentage from beyond the arc of all the teams in the field of 68. Do you believe that defense wins championships? No. 1 UVA and No. 2 Cincinnati both have dominated in opponents' points per game. With just a few minutes of data input on a spreadsheet, you can even combine stats you believe to be valuable to create a new statistic all your own.
Obviously you don't have to follow your statistical choices as law — I would advise on picking a top seed to beat their No. 16 opponent, even if you're accounting for foul shots and the lesser team has been perfect from the free throw line — but picking a stat you believe in and sticking to it is a great way to make the tough choices towards the end of your bracket, and a fun indicator of potential upset picks you might like to back in the early rounds.
4. Follow an expert or celebrity bracket.
If you want to be extra passive while filling out your bracket, there's no shame in following the lead of a celebrity or analyst you trust. While the tradition of the presidential bracket has fallen off since the Trump administration took office, there are still plenty of expert and non-expert brackets out there to use as a launchpad for your bracket. Pick a trusted writer at ESPN or any number of other sites (hint: Business Insider), and use their picks as a way to get you into the game.
5. Base your picks on colors, fight song, and/or personal grudges.
Getting weirder into our bracket suggestions, it's always fun to get a bit of school pride involved. In this case, basing your picks off of school colors, fight songs, and any particular grudges you have against different schools across the country is usually an interesting experiment in breaking up people's overly-cautious tendencies with bracket building.
Picking by fight song usually isn't that bad of a bet, as great basketball teams and great bands go relatively hand in hand. Additionally, school colors can add a bit of variance to your bracket, or at the very least help you sneak UNC and Tennessee into your Final Four. But in my opinion, there is no better way to fill out your bracket than based on petty grievance.
Did a former friend of yours go to Villanova and turn into a dudebro that raves about IPAs and his stock portfolio and is now impossible to have a conversation with? Knock 'em out in the second round. Still holding a grudge against Christian Laettner? Take out Duke early and laugh when they fall. Have a crush on someone that graduated from Michigan State? Pick them to make a run to the Final Four and use it as a way to start an awkward text conversation that you'll probably later regret.
It's your bracket and it's your right to use it to exorcise whatever emotions you might need to let out.
6. Mascot fight!
Even if you don't use it as a way to build your bracket, I at the very least encourage you to go through the process of mentally imagining a few mascot fights, just for the thrill of it. It's one of the weirder ideas that gets thrown around every March, but that makes it no less fun as a thought experiment.
Jayhawks vs. Quakers in the first round! Spartans facing off against Blue Devils in the Sweet 16! Wildcats fighting Wildcats for the national championship! Let your imagination run wild with the possibility of it all.
Personally, I think Purdue would dominate the field operating by this logic, as trains are notoriously difficult to stop, but you're welcome to your own interpretation.
7. When in doubt, in KenPom we trust.
While there's plenty of fun ways to build and break your bracket, if you're ever in a tough spot that you really don't know how to get past and refuse to leave up to a coin flip or some other form of chance, when in doubt, consult with KenPom.
Ken Pomeroy is a savant of college basketball statistics, and his ratings are some of the best and clearest indicators of potential success you can find. Whether you're stuck on a difficult first round match, or have your perfect Final Four but don't know who to pick to win it all, you can do far worst than simply following KenPom's advice.
Now check out one player to know from each team competing in the tournament.
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