NCAA Upset Predictions 2025: Cinderella Picks for Men's March Madness Bracket

The NCAA Tournament bracket is set.

Who's ready to see it busted?

While some Big Dances have more madness than others, there's always some degree of chaos. It's possible this year could be more chaotic than most, because this tournament feels relatively wide open.

Fortune tellers only know what's to come, but our crystal ball sees upset potential in the following three matchups.

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No. 11 Drake Over No. 6 Missouri (West)

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Missouri played some great stretches of basketball this season. Most of them happened well off in the rearview mirror, unfortunately.

The Tigers enter this tilt having lost five of their last seven outing. And while the depth of the SEC is partly to blame, only two of the five losses came against ranked opponents.

The Bulldogs, meanwhile, essentially know nothing other than winning. They take a ridiculous 30-3 record into this outing, and those three losses were decided by a total of 13 points. Granted, they didn't face the toughest schedule around, but they still bulldozed just about everything in their path. They also have one of the tournament's most efficient offensive weapons in junior guard Bennett Stirtz, who averages 19.1 points on 49.3/38.6/79.5 shooting and 5.7 assists against 2.0 turnovers.

Missouri's offense is electric, but its defense can be nearly as generous. Drake might have the balance needed to engineer the upset.

No. 12 UC San Diego Over No. 5 Michigan (South)

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It almost feels cliched to pick a 12-seed scoring the upset, but that's fine. Accuracy is better than boldness, and this feels like it has a good chance of hitting.

The seed lines overstate the separation between these schools. KenPom's efficiency rankings put them just 11 spots apart, with the Wolverines 25th overall and the Tritons 36th.

UC San Diego, which hasn't lost in a game in two months, could enter this contest reasonably believing that it will have the best player on the floor. Senior swingman Aniwaniwa Tait-Jones, the Big West Player of the Year, is about as productive as they come with his overstuffed stat sheet featuring per-game contributions of 19.5 points, 5.5 rebounds, 3.7 assists and 1.3 steals.

Michigan's size might be overwhelming for UC San Diego, but that won't be the case if the Wolverines have one of their cold nights offensively. And those frigid showings did make more regular appearances over the final few months of the season.

No. 14 Montana Over No. 3 Wisconsin (East)

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Momentum can be massive in March, and Montana will bring plenty of it into this tilt.

The Grizzlies won 14 of their final 15 contests, and they won their three Big Sky Tournament games by a combined 40 points. Their surging offense is a big reason why they ended the campaign on such a tear.

"Since Jan. 20, they have been a top-40 offense, making 60.9 percent of their shots inside the arc and 42.1 percent from beyond it—both the No. 2 marks nationally at BartTorvik.com over that stretch," ESPN's Myron Medcalf noted.

While the Badgers just played their way into the Big Ten Tournament final, they also flashed the limitations of their offense in that outing (53 points on 22.1 percent shooting). Because they prefer to play at a controlled tempo, they have little margin for error, meaning disaster could streak when their offense goes dormant. Montana looks like just the kind of plucky opponent who can capitalize on one of those off-nights.