NCAA Tournament: 5 Tips For Filling Out Your Bracket
March Madness is upon us. The tournament begins this evening with the First Four and continues with four straight days chock full of games Thursday-Sunday. You're probably filling out a bracket with visions of money dancing in your head. (You can get involved with our bracket challenge by signing up here) Here's 5 tips to try and help out.
1) Coaching matters- If you’ve followed the NCAA Tournament over the years you’ll notice that some coaches are better than others at getting the most out of their available talent come March. Tom Izzo, John Calipari, Rick Pitino are great examples of this. Rick Barnes, Mike Brey, and Jamie Dixon are the opposite. They haven’t done the best job over the years of getting their team into the next round. Keep this in mind when looking at match-ups. If it’s close, the coaching factor can swing it in one team's favor over the other.
2) Playing styles matter- You’ve probably heard this before, but teams that rely heavily on the three ball tend to struggle come March. Davidson and VCU are two prime candidates to go cold from three and be knocked out early. Defensive teams that rely on creating turnovers as their main source of offense (San Diego State) can struggle as well when teams are better prepared to handle the pressure. Look at how the teams play.
3) Beware the one man wrecking crew- Shabazz Napier. Kemba Walker. Anthony Davis. Stephen Curry. This rule goes for both big name programs that may be seeded slightly lower than normal, and for mid to low major schools that have a prolific scorer on the roster. One player can take over a game or multiple games in March Madness. Some candidates for this category? Tyler Harvey (Eastern Washington), R.J. Hunter (Georgia State), or for a more traditional power D’Angelo Russell (Ohio State). You could also include Jerian Grant on this list, the only reason I didn’t was because I was trying to restrict it to lower seeds. Let's relive one of those Kemba games shall we?
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4) Experience- This matters mainly in 1st round games pitting a senior laden mid to low major against a freshman led power school. Last year’s best example was Mercer against Duke. The Blue Devils relied heavily on Jabari Parker and a red-shirt sophomore Rodney Hood who hadn’t played much. Mercer on the other hand had seven seniors on their squad with five starting and the other two coming off the bench. That makes a difference.
5) Don’t get too upset happy- After considering the previous four factors make your picks. But, keep in mind that in the tournament while upsets happen they aren’t consistent year to year. Last year’s tourney had 21 upsets in 63 games including 3 that were a one seed difference (8 vs. 9 for example). Prior to that, the last time there were more than 20 upsets with less than 5 that were a one seed in difference was 2006. Upsets happen. 12 v. 5 seems particularly vulnerable in recent years. That doesn’t mean pick every 12 seed, or every 13 seed. The four factors above this one play key roles in deciding whether upsets will or won’t happen. Cinderella runs are fun, but VCU or George Mason to the Final Four doesn’t happen every year.
For some more bracket breakdowns, check out CBS Local Sports' Bracket Preview Shows with Steve Overmyer and Jon Rothstein. The South region breakdown is below.
Ryan Mayer is an Associate Producer for CBS Local Sports. Ryan lives in NY but comes from Philly and life as a Philly sports fan has made him cynical. Anywhere sports are being discussed, that's where you'll find him.
