My sure-fire strategy to winning the March Madness bracket!
It's guaranteed to be little worse than whatever strategy you employ!
I don’t want to brag, but I’ve won the family March Madness bracket challenge for two years in a row…
Who all is involved? Me, my wife, her brother and his wife, and her parents. Is it a deep pool of talented bracketeers I’ve overcome? Not exactly. Did I win by default last year by being the only person to actually get a team to the Final Four and Championship? Essentially yes. Did any of my other picks put my in position to contend for the victory?
Look, do you want to know my method or not?
My method is fairly simple and has similar origins to many of my college sports theories. After very sporadically watching Texas basketball over the last decade while normally preferring the NBA, I started comparing some of the tactics and feel of Texas basketball and Big 12 basketball relative to how other teams played in the tournament. When the Longhorns hired Chris Beard (a short-lived disaster) I began to understand the game much better by seeing how Texas began to play it in a fashion closer to how the better teams did things. With that knowledge, I began to pick much better brackets.
The NCAA tournament is often derided as being something of a crapshoot because of the single-game elimination factor. “Anyone can win!” is the common selling point.
However if you watch these games with a discerning eye it’s really more like a 90s UFC/Mixed Martial Arts tournament. The karate master might have been elite when fighting other karate enthusiasts, but his discipline left him totally vulnerable against a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
The NCAA tournament karate master…
There are certain dimensions to college basketball which make all the difference in winning or losing a tournament against top teams. If you identify what they are, you have a chance at picking a winning bracket.