The college basketball season is entering the meat of the season with all teams into conference play. In a month this will lead to every team sitting in anticipation to hear their names called on Selection Sunday. Every team looks to the future to experience their one shining moment in the tournament. For me, March Madness is the peak of all sports giving some of the best basketball games with the most unpredictable outcomes. That is why I will try and predict some outcomes for the most unpredictable tournament in all sports. 

I will use Joe Lunardi’s most updated bracketology for these predictions. Joe is one of the only bracketologists and is very successful at what he does. He uses the same criteria the selection committee uses to get as close as possible to the actual rankings on selection Sunday. He releases new brackets every Tuesday and Friday during conference play and every day during conference tournaments. This article will be using the bracketology posted on February 6th, 2024.  

The possible champions of March Madness are relatively easy to predict. Every champion since 2002 has had a top 40 offense and top 25 defense in Kenpom’s ratings. This leaves us with 12 possible champions. These teams include Houston, Purdue, Uconn, Arizona, Auburn, North Carolina, BYU, Marquette, Kansas, Michigan St, Creighton, and New Mexico. Teams like New Mexico and Creighton are on the fringe of being out of the requirements, so we will exclude them from being possible champions for now. This brings us to 10 possible champions. Furthermore, the team to win the championship since 2002 has had a top 55 strength of schedule according to Kenpom ratings. No team has finished their season yet, so some teams might get higher as they go through conference play. For the sake of predictions, I will use the data currently available. This eliminates Auburn and BYU from being champions. That leaves us with 8 possible champions. These include Houston, Purdue, Uconn, Arizona, North Carolina, Marquette, Kansas, and Michigan St. 

Now to move on to the first round. In the first round, there is an average of 6.2 upsets. The most upsets ever in a first round has been 10 and the least was 2. I recommend taking 6 or 7 upsets, but I could see up to 10 happening this year because of how many upsets we have seen in the regular season. For the 1 vs 16 games there is not likely to be an upset with the 1 seed winning over 99% of the time, so in almost every bracket the 1 seed should be taken. For the 2 vs 15, an upset is slightly more probable, but it’s still over a 93% chance that the 2 seed will win. I like Colgate as a 15 over 2 if someone really wants to take a 15 over 2, but I don’t recommend it. For the 3 vs 14 games, I still wouldn’t recommend taking any upsets, but if High Point gets the right matchup they could win. Their offense is ranked within the top 25, but they can’t play a lick of defense. For the 4 vs 13 games the 4 seed still has about an 80% chance to win, but I believe Dayton is very overrated so I could see them losing. I also really like Mcneese St. They rank way above their seeding and I could see them surprising a lot of people. Now with the 5 vs 12 matchups, we start entering serious upset territory. The 5 vs 12 is the most commonly picked upset, but the 12 seed only wins 35% of the time. I could see Florida Atlantic losing and I could see UC Irvine winning. UC Irvine is a very good defensive team which could give them a lot of momentum in the tournament. Florida Atlantic has been up and down this season, so who knows what’s going to happen in the tournament. For the 6 vs 11 games the win percentage is about the same as the 5 vs 12. I really like Indiana State and Florida to upset. I also believe South Carolina is an overrated team that could easily get upset. For the 7 vs 10 games the 7 seed has about a 60% chance to win. I like TCU to be upset as they are ranked highly above their ranking. The 8 vs 9 is about a 50-50 on who is going to win, so for most of these games, it’s just a coin flip. For my 6 upsets, I will take Indiana State over South Carolina, TCU over Colorado State, App State over Florida Atlantic, Boise State over Utah, UC Irvine or San Diego St, and Akron over Dayton.

Now the second round is where things start to get a little more complicated. There is an average of 3.7 upsets in the second round, so we will round up and say 4. Out of the seeds 9-16 the 11 seed has been the most likely to advance into the Sweet 16, so I would recommend having an 11 over 6 upset in the Sweet 16. I also like to take a 7 or 10 seed over a 2 seed in a lot of brackets. The 2 seed only wins these matchups 62% of the time, almost guaranteeing it to happen once. My favorite 2 seed losing would be Kansas losing to Michigan St. They are ranked very similar and if Michigan St keeps winning like they are now anybody will want to see them come tournament time. Also, the 3 seed only has a 52% win percentage in the second round, so that’s another used to look at. The 5 vs 4 is also very easy to have an upset to meet the 4 average.

The Sweet 16 is where things start to get serious for a lot of teams. The most common teams to advance are the 1,2,3,4, and 6 seeds. The 5 seeds are rarely seen in the Elite 8, so I don’t recommend having them in the Elite 8. I do recommend having 2 1 seeds at least as they have over a 68% chance to make the elite 8. I also recommend picking a Cinderella team with a higher seed 6 and above because we will need them in the final 4. 

For the elite 8, we will need to pick our final 4 teams. Since 2002 the average seeds of the teams in the final four add up to be 13. This is where our seed 6 and above comes in. We can’t have all 1 and 2 seeds because that will only add up to at most 8. My two picks to possibly be the lower seed that makes it to the final 4 are BYU and Michigan State being a 6 and 7 seed respectively. Since we have a 7 and 6 we need the combination of 7 seeds to meet the average. 1 seed has a 40% chance to make the final 4, so it’s optimal to have 1 if not 2 1 seed in the final 4. The regions work out perfectly in Joe Lunadri’s bracketology so that we can have the 1 seed Purdue, the 6 seed BYU, the 7 seed Michigan St, and the 1 seed Houston in the final 4. This adds up to 14 which is very close to the average. 

Now picking the national championship game. We want to have at least one 1 seed in the national championship as they have a 25% chance of making it. Spoiler alert, but my champion is going to be Purdue, so I will have them moving on to the national championship game. Then as much as I want to pick the Cinderella to be in the national championship 7 seeds only have a .7% chance to make it, so I will take the 1 seed Houston to meet Purdue in the championship and ultimately fall to the Boilermakers. 

This was my thought process as I went through filling out my bracket in March. The use of past present and statistics drives my decision-making process. Hopefully, this will help you fill out your brackets when the time comes.