The National College Athletic Association’s (NCAA) March Madness is a prestigious college basketball tournament that happens every year. The formatting and high paced action creates an intense and entertaining environment. Many teams call the 68 team, win-or-go-home style of play the greatest playoff tournament in existence. Fans can create their own brackets, select the winners of each game and pick a champion to have someone to root for. This format allows for a large amount of upsets, which creates great momentum for the team as well as chaos for the tournament, hence the name “madness”.
Fans can create their own brackets and enter their brackets into the various pools where, if they get the most points based on their selections, they have the chance to win thousands of dollars, all for free. You can also create a bracket pool with your friends or family and compete against their brackets.
The points system for brackets can vary based on the settings, but it tends to be where you gain more points for picking teams that make it deeper in the tournament. For example, if you predict Florida to win the championship, and they successfully make it there, they will get more points for winning the championship game than them winning the round of 64 game. No one has ever made a legitimately perfect bracket that has been proven to be made before the tournament, so fans are always on the hunt to win that title.
Since choosing the winner of the tournament gets you the most points in the bracket challenge (and the biggest bragging rights), here are some of the predicted winners.
One of these favorites to win it all is Duke. As the champion of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), they are ranked first overall with a record of 32-2. They are led by the team’s freshman forward, Cameron Boozer, who leads the team in points per game (22.5), rebounds per game (10.2) and assists per game (4.2). Cameron Boozer and other amazing talents like guard Isiah Evans and center Patrick Ngongba II. Duke deals in top end efficiency on both sides of the ball making them a pretty safe bet to pick to make the final four and even to win the championship.
Michigan is another team that has a great chance to win it all. They have an extremely talented frontcourt with forwards Yaxel Lendeborg and Morez Johnson Jr.. Michigan is the Big 10 conference champion as well as the third overall best team, with a record of 31-3 despite having the hardest schedule out of every team in College Basketball. Michigan has a very strong defense and dominant first half basketball making them a safe and popular choice for a winner.
The winner that I have selected for my main bracket however, is Arizona. They are the Big 12 conference champion and the number two team overall with a record of 32-2. They rally behind freshman guard, Brayden Burries, who with the help of a veteran supporting cast has had an amazing season so far. The sheer size at every position Arizona possesses is a key aspect of their success causing the team to be amazing at rebounding. They also have amazing depth with an experienced 8-man core that looks to make a deep run this season.
However, there are always upsets in March Madness because of the win-or-go-home format. This allows a chance for underdog or ‘sleeper’ teams to make runs and score some points for you that other brackets are probably missing out on. Don’t read too much into the seeding and record because some of the teams like Vanderbilt with extremely high powered offenses can take down any team. While rankings aren’t everything, they are still underdogs. If you want to take some, here are the ones that I recommend (but remember, no matter how much research you do, March Madness is mostly based on luck).
One of the first round upsets that I recommend taking a shot on is VCU over UNC. VCU is very hot coming into the tournament winning 16 of their last 17 games and are looking to go on a run this postseason. To make it even better for the Rams, UNC is missing their best player Caleb Wilson to a thumb injury.
Another potential sneaky upset I like is Hofstra over Alabama. Alabama is a very quick tempo team that relies on outscoring the opponent and a quantity of three pointers. Hofstra is a very defensively focused team that relies heavily on their defense limiting possessions. If the three ball isn’t falling for Alabama, like when they lost to Vanderbilt earlier in the season, they are very beatable. Not to mention Alabama is not going to have one of their best players Aden Holloway due to his arrest. Even if you don’t take Alabama to lose to Hofstra, I would not take them to get much further.
March Madness is an incredible time to be a sports fan. There is tons of action all throughout the end of March into April for fans to enjoy one of the craziest sports tournaments of all time. Remember that predicting the games is all luck so don’t feel bad if your bracket is miserable despite the fact that you did tons of research. No one has ever made a perfect bracket before, but if you make the right picks, listen to my advice and have the greatest luck of all on your side, you may be the first. The experience is called March Madness after all.
