Submitted by rsteel on
Every year I am asked for advice regarding filling out your brackets and pools for the NCAAB tournament. Not only is March madness great and presents us with betting opportunities but it also means baseball is about to begin.
Let me get the most obvious statement out of the way first. When filling out your brackets the MOST important thing is to pick the eventual champion. Start at the end of your bracket and work backwards. Most pools are weighted to the elite 8 and beyond. If you focused so much on the early games and not enough of your teams survived to the later rounds where the majority of points are earned you will have no chance.
We always here about these smaller schools from weak conferences in the early rounds that record some major upsets and get lots of publicity from it. The reality is 86% of the last 25 years champions have been a #1 or a #2 seed.
The bigger your pool the more chances you should take to differentiate yourself from the pack. The smaller the pool the more conservative you can be. Let your opponents make the mistakes.
Let the madness begin and best of luck!