NCAA Bracket Advice: Combinations and the Perfect Bracket
Basketball fans seeking bracket advice flock to the internet to print off the NCAA tournament bracket after the field and pairings are announced on Selection Sunday. While some will quick fill out the bracket and call it good, others will study, research, and apply strategy to their NCAA tournament bracket picks. For those seeking NCAA bracket advice and who like to add some strategy to their March Madness brackets, I'd like to share a thought process that I think can improve your chances of doing well in an office pool or contest.
There are obviously many combinations possible within the tourney bracket. Ever wonder how many? Try 9,223,372,036,854, 780,000. That's over 9 quintillion unique bracket sheets that could be filled out. I minored in math in college and statistics was my favorite area. To arrive at that figure you simply take the number of possible outcomes per game(2) and the total number of tourney
There are obviously many combinations possible within the tourney bracket. Ever wonder how many? Try 9,223,372,036,854, 780,000. That's over 9 quintillion unique bracket sheets that could be filled out. I minored in math in college and statistics was my favorite area. To arrive at that figure you simply take the number of possible outcomes per game(2) and the total number of tourney
games(63). You multiply 2 by itself 63 times. So 2 times 2 times 2 and so on until you've done it 63 times. You will come out with 9,223,372,036,854,780,000.
To put a little more perspective on this let's cut the NCAA tournament down to the best 32 teams in the nation. Now there's only 31 games involved in the tourney. So you multiply 2 by itself 31 times and you get 2,147,483,648 or over 2 billion possible unique NCAA bracket sheets. What if it was only a 16 team tournament? You'd have 32,768 combinations. An 8 team tournament produces 128 possible results while a four team tournament produces 24.
Now we can take those numbers and apply them to our NCAA bracket advice and philosophy. Ultimately you want to base your picks on your knowledge and gut feel for each team. So you work your way through your bracket and you end up with a national champion. This is the point where you can start going back through your bracket and noting which teams and games you feel are locks. You can also note which games you aren't real sure about. Rather than start with the first round of the tournament, start with the NCAA championship game and work yourself back to the early rounds.
National champion bracket advice: There are only 2 possibilities with the championship game. Are you confident with your pick? If yes then move back to the Final Four round. If no then make a note as you may want to fill out a second bracket and just switch who you pick to be national champion. Work your way back through the entire bracket before making that decision though.
Final Four bracket advice: Check out your Final Four picks. Are you confident in both, one, or none of those picks? If none then you're basically saying that you don't have a good feel for which of the 24 possible combinations will play out from the Final Four onwards.
Elite 8 bracket advice: Check out your Elite 8. There are 128 possible combinations that could play out during the rest of the tournament. Do you consider any of your picks to be locks? Which games are you unsure about? What if you chose the other team in games you're unsure about? How would that affect your Final Four and your championship game?
Sweet 16 bracket advice: Jump back to the Sweet 16 and go through the same thought process. If you changed a few of your picks in this round how does that affect your choices in the Elite 8, Final Four, and national championship game? Do this for 2nd round games and then finally the 1st round games.
General NCAA bracket advice: When it's all said and done you should have a pretty good map of where you're confident in your bracket, where you are unsure, and how you will fill out any additional brackets. When it comes down to filling out additional brackets you're going to have to make some tough calls. I'm sure there will be several games that you're unsure about both early and deep into the NCAA tournament bracket. You're not going to be able to fill out a bracket to cover all of your bases. So you have to make some decisions and decide which games you are the least confident in. Decide how many brackets you're going to fill out and then narrow down the distinctions between each bracket.
Everybody strives for the perfect bracket. Big corporations even dangle multi-million dollar prizes on their sites for filling out a perfect NCAA bracket. They can do that because they understand the math and odds behind the bracket. It's virtually impossible to pick all 63 games correct. With that said you can put together some solid brackets that will do well in many pools. It takes time, research, knowledge, strategy, bracket advice, and of course some luck.
It helps to understand what you're up against when filling out an NCAA tournament bracket. That's why I wrote this article. The majority of people believe ending up with a great bracket sheet is due mostly to luck and just a little bit of intuition. I don't necessarily agree with that. Luck does play a factor, especially in tournaments like 2006 when George Mason made their run. The few people who had George Mason in the Final Four were lucky and not smarter than the rest of us. I believe knowledge is king and more times than not outweighs the luck factor when filling out an NCAA tournament bracket. Know the teams, know the stats, know history, take in some bracket advice, and fill out more than one bracket to give yourself the best chance of winning a pool or contest.
Back to NCAA Bracket Tips
Back to College Basketball Rankings home page
Check out NCAA women's bracket advice
To put a little more perspective on this let's cut the NCAA tournament down to the best 32 teams in the nation. Now there's only 31 games involved in the tourney. So you multiply 2 by itself 31 times and you get 2,147,483,648 or over 2 billion possible unique NCAA bracket sheets. What if it was only a 16 team tournament? You'd have 32,768 combinations. An 8 team tournament produces 128 possible results while a four team tournament produces 24.
Now we can take those numbers and apply them to our NCAA bracket advice and philosophy. Ultimately you want to base your picks on your knowledge and gut feel for each team. So you work your way through your bracket and you end up with a national champion. This is the point where you can start going back through your bracket and noting which teams and games you feel are locks. You can also note which games you aren't real sure about. Rather than start with the first round of the tournament, start with the NCAA championship game and work yourself back to the early rounds.
National champion bracket advice: There are only 2 possibilities with the championship game. Are you confident with your pick? If yes then move back to the Final Four round. If no then make a note as you may want to fill out a second bracket and just switch who you pick to be national champion. Work your way back through the entire bracket before making that decision though.
Final Four bracket advice: Check out your Final Four picks. Are you confident in both, one, or none of those picks? If none then you're basically saying that you don't have a good feel for which of the 24 possible combinations will play out from the Final Four onwards.
Elite 8 bracket advice: Check out your Elite 8. There are 128 possible combinations that could play out during the rest of the tournament. Do you consider any of your picks to be locks? Which games are you unsure about? What if you chose the other team in games you're unsure about? How would that affect your Final Four and your championship game?
Sweet 16 bracket advice: Jump back to the Sweet 16 and go through the same thought process. If you changed a few of your picks in this round how does that affect your choices in the Elite 8, Final Four, and national championship game? Do this for 2nd round games and then finally the 1st round games.
General NCAA bracket advice: When it's all said and done you should have a pretty good map of where you're confident in your bracket, where you are unsure, and how you will fill out any additional brackets. When it comes down to filling out additional brackets you're going to have to make some tough calls. I'm sure there will be several games that you're unsure about both early and deep into the NCAA tournament bracket. You're not going to be able to fill out a bracket to cover all of your bases. So you have to make some decisions and decide which games you are the least confident in. Decide how many brackets you're going to fill out and then narrow down the distinctions between each bracket.
Everybody strives for the perfect bracket. Big corporations even dangle multi-million dollar prizes on their sites for filling out a perfect NCAA bracket. They can do that because they understand the math and odds behind the bracket. It's virtually impossible to pick all 63 games correct. With that said you can put together some solid brackets that will do well in many pools. It takes time, research, knowledge, strategy, bracket advice, and of course some luck.
It helps to understand what you're up against when filling out an NCAA tournament bracket. That's why I wrote this article. The majority of people believe ending up with a great bracket sheet is due mostly to luck and just a little bit of intuition. I don't necessarily agree with that. Luck does play a factor, especially in tournaments like 2006 when George Mason made their run. The few people who had George Mason in the Final Four were lucky and not smarter than the rest of us. I believe knowledge is king and more times than not outweighs the luck factor when filling out an NCAA tournament bracket. Know the teams, know the stats, know history, take in some bracket advice, and fill out more than one bracket to give yourself the best chance of winning a pool or contest.
Back to NCAA Bracket Tips
Back to College Basketball Rankings home page
Check out NCAA women's bracket advice
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