2023 NCAA Tournament Bracket Pool Strategy (March Madness)

Every year millions of people fill out a bracket, whether for fun or to actually try to win some money. This article coincides with a previous article about the historical seed advancement rate in the KenPom era. That article will help you understand what your bracket should look like. The first weekend is arguably the most exciting four days on the sports calendar. Forty-eight games in a four-day span.

2023 March Madness Bracket Pool Strategy

Let’s dive into the most important factors that correlate to winning a bracket pool.

Factors to Winning a Bracket Pool

- Picking the National Champion
- Getting 2-3 Final 4 Teams
- Picking the correct contest to play in
- Not getting wrapped up in crazy upsets
- Leveraging Public Opinion
- Understanding scoring for each contest

ESPN’s bracket contest is one of the biggest free contests out there. It is essentially a crapshoot with millions of contestants. The great thing is it gives us an overall template of how the public views the tournament. We can then leverage their favoritism by possibly getting different and giving ourselves a chance at the best possible path to winning.

Understanding the Scoring

Understanding the scoring for the contest you are entering is crucial. The majority of contests are pretty straightforward and very similar. They tend to all follow the same structure, and points given for correct picks grow exponentially as the tournament goes on. Here is the base example:

First round: 32 games, each game worth 10 points = 320 possible points
Second round: 16 games, each game worth 20 points = 320 possible points
Sweet 16: 8 games each game worth 40 points = 320 possible points
Elite 8: 4 games, each game worth 80 points = 320 possible points
Final 4: 2 games, each game worth 160 points= 320 possible points
Championship game: 1 game worth 320 points

As most people know, you cannot win a bracket contest without picking the national champion, but conversely, you need to pick three Final 4 teams. Tournament contests are incredibly top-heavy. Picking a bunch of upsets in the first couple of rounds is fantastic on paper, but if you fail to pick the national champion and several Final 4 contestants, you will be on the outside looking in at the end of the tournament.

Picking the National Champion & Final Four Teams

Picking a champion is imperative to place high in any bracket contest. Here are a couple of points to consider when picking your bracket champion.

19 of the last 20 champions have been a 1-3 Seed (UCONN was a (7) seed in 2014)
14 of the last 20 champions have been (1) seeds
Every champion has had a positive Turnover/Rebounding combo margin (using Offensive Rebounding %, Offensive Rebounding % Allowed, and Turnover %)
Zero champions have lost their first conference tournament game
Zero champions have had an AdjDE 96 or higher

These are just a few statistics to think about when picking a champion, but they should help narrow the field when filling out your bracket. For Final 4 teams, read the previous article on historical advance rates to see how often 1-4 seeds advance to the Final 4. Here are a couple of highlights to help you:

1-seeds have an advancement rate of 40% to the Final 4
A seed (5) or higher has made the Final 4 in 10 of the last 11 years
Three or more (1) seeds have only made the Final 4 twice in the last 20 years (2008 and 2015)
Twice has there been a Final 4 without a (1) seed in the last 20 years (2006 and 2011)
1-4 seeds represent 63 of the 80 Final 4 Teams (78%)

Leveraging Public Opinion

Lastly, leveraging public opinion and perception is key. If you have a pool of contestants picking a champion at a 50% rate, there’s no value in taking that team. You can go a different direction and possibly win the entire contest by getting fewer overall picks correct but picking a different champion. This is why using ESPN’s people bracket as a barometer for public perception is a great tool. The majority of people in bracket contests are going to gravitate to whoever the majority of analysts are picking (think of the 2018 Duke Team with Zion). If you would have taken Michigan State to make the Final 4 out of that region, you were immediately different from the rest of the bracket pool.

As always, thank you for reading, and if you have any questions about the process or data, you can reach out to me at @goldendomer622 on Twitter. Tune in next week when the brackets are released. We will be diving into statistics that correlate to underachieving and overachieving top seeds, possible cinderella teams, and picks for champions!!!

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