Five Things You Should Consider When Filling Out Your Bracket

It’s almost bracket picking time, and everyone has a system or a theory to help them out. Regardless of your system, consider these historical trends while you’re picking your winners.

Keep in mind that these trends say what is likely to happen, not what will happen. Everything here is based off of the era of 64-team tournaments, which means we’ve only got 24 past tournaments to go off of.

One last thing: I do not classify an eight-seed losing to a nine-seed as an upset. That is all; let’s do this.

Kansas, UCLA, Memphis, and North Carolina will all win their first round games, but at least one will probably lose its second round game.

In the last ten years, nearly every Final Four team has won its first round game the next year (provided it made the tournament). The three that have not were all Big Ten teams and six-seeds or below. No Big Ten squads made the Final Four and it’s looking like all of last year’s participants will be at least four-seeds, so those teams should be safe.

For all of the tournaments though, never have all Final Four teams from one year made the Sweet 16 the next.

The champion will almost certainly be a one, two, or three-seed.

Only three teams lower than a three-seed have won it all: eight-seed Villanova in 1985, six-seed Kansas in 1988, and four-seed Arizona in 1997. Keep in mind that in the ‘80s when the six and eight-seeds won, we didn’t have nearly the coverage of the sport we do now. The committee has gotten better with more time and more film, and a team at the top will take home the title.

In case you’re wondering, one-seeds have won just over half of the championships and seven of the last ten. Three-seeds aren’t even that great a bet, as only three of those have ever won the whole thing (though two were this decade).

Strictly speaking, based on history each one-seed has a 13.5 percent chance of winning it all, each two-seed has a 5.2 percent chance, each three-seed has a 3.1 percent chance, and everyone else from four-seeds to eight-seeds has a 0.4 percent chance.

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