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- Building the Perfect March Madness Bracket
Welcome to the “Illumined Insights” newsletter! Thank you so much for subscribing. This weekly newsletter touches on all things analytics and data science with a focus on areas such as data visualization and sports analytics. This week we look at building the “perfect” March Madness bracket!
Stephen Hill, Ph.D.
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DALL-E 3 Image (Prompt: Generate a whimsical image to represent a March Madness bracket contest.)
I’m about as big a college football fan as there is, but I have to admit that the first two days of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament may be my favorite days on the sports calendar. Building a bracket (or lots of brackets!) adds a level of excitement and competition. Let’s look at four tips for creating a “perfect” bracket. Before we get too far into this we should go ahead and note that no one has ever built a perfect bracket prediction 🙂 Don’t get your hopes up, but have fun and enjoy the ride over the next few weeks!
Tip 1: Go Ahead and Advance the 1, 2, and 3 Seeds
The magic of March Madness is driven by the unthinkable upsets that often happen during the early rounds of the tournament. Teams like St. Peter’s, UMBC, and FDU are forever engrained in tournament and sports history because of their unlikely wins. Before you decide to pencil in a 14, 15, or 16 seed to pull off a colossal upset, you should note what you’re up against. Number 1 seeds have only lost twice to Number 16 seeds (a winning percentage of nearly 99%). Number 2 seeds have a winning percentage of about 93% over 15 seeds. Number 3 seeds defeat Number 14 seeds about 86% of the time. In my brackets, I’m automatically advancing the 1 and 2 seeds and it’s going to take a lot for me to consider a 14 over 3 upset. If you think a 1, 2, or 3 seed is particularly vulnerable, you’re probably better off picking them to lose in the Second Round. Save yourself some heartache and go with the “chalk” picks in the First Round.
Tip 2: Know the Profile of a Champion
I find it useful to go ahead and pencil-in my projected champion early on in my bracket construction. What characteristics does a champion typically possess? Historically, tournament champions possess a combination of strong offense and defense. You might be saying, “Well, yeah. Of course. A team with a good offense and good defense is likely to be a contender”. It’s a bit deeper than that.
You’ll probably do a pretty good job of predicting a champion if you consider offensive and defensive efficiency that is adjusted for strength of opponent. Sites like barttorvik.com and kenpom.com provide plenty of advanced statistics including adjusted offensive and defensive efficiency. Both of these sites are great resources to help you identify teams that excel on both offense and defense. This excellent plot (below) from Andrew Weatherman (Twitter/X link) does a great job of showing how past champions have relied on a combination of strong adjusted offensive and defensive efficiency. Look out for Houston, Auburn, Arizona, and UConn in the 2024 field. Hint: I’ve picked three of these four teams to make the Final Four.
Adjusted Offensive and Defensive Efficiency of Champions and 2024 Tournament Participants (Source: andreweatherman on Twitter/X)
Tip 3: Looking to Pick an Early Upset? Choose Wisely!
The First and Second Round upsets are part of the “madness” and chaos of the tournament. It’s natural to want to pick a few upsets. Doing so should be done strategically. Let’s look at the records of the 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 seeds in the First Round since the tournament expanded to 64 (and then 68) teams (Source: NCAA):
Seed vs. Seed | Higher Seed Win % |
|---|---|
4 vs. 13 | 78.9% |
5 vs. 12 | 65.1% |
6 vs. 11 | 61.8% |
7 vs. 10 | 60.9% |
8 vs. 9 | 48.7% |
The 5 vs. 12 match-up is a fan favorite for upsets. If we look back over the last 38 years of tournament, at least one 12 seed has advanced out of the First Round in 32 of the years. James Madison over Wisconsin will be a popular 12 over 5 upset pick this year (barttorvik.com gives James Madison a 27.4% chance to win that match-up, the best chance of the 12 seeds). Taking a risk on a 4 vs. 13 is a harder pill to swallow. Analytically (at least according to Torvik), Samford (Go Bulldogs!) has the best shot among the 13 seeds with a 21.1% chance to beat Kansas.
If we turn our attention to the 6 vs. 11 seeds, New Mexico appears to be badly under-seeded and is favored over Clemson in the betting markets and by Torvik. A 6 seed falling to an 11 is a pretty regular occurrence (at least one 11 has advanced from the First Round in every tournament since 2004 and five 11 seeds have actually advanced to the Final Four, but none have ever won the championship). A 7 seed falling to a 10 seed is rarely a surprise and 9 seeds actually have a record slightly above 50% against 8 seeds. Nevada and Drake will be both be popular picks among the 10 seeds. TCU (a 9 seed) is favored by four over Utah State and is given a 60% to pull off the minor upset.
Tip 4: Don’t Overdo It With Upsets
It can be tempting to pick a whole bunch of upsets in the first two rounds. I get it. Picking upsets is fun 🙂 Be careful because a poorly selected upset can wreck your bracket. Brackets that are “chalky” (i.e., tend to select the favorites) will often outperform those that rely too heavily on selecting early round upsets. If you really must pick upsets, you’re probably better off waiting until the Sweet Sixteen or Elite Eight rounds.
Good luck!
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