NCAA Basketball Bracket Tips
When filling out an NCAA bracket, there are many things to keep in mind. We certainly can’t claim to be perfect — no one is. As experienced bracket pickers know, filling out a bracket sheet can certainly give new meaning to the words March Madness! But here is some information that should be useful.
Some thing to consider while playing NCAA Basketball bracket
1. Overall Performance
The best measure of overall performance is definitely our NCAA basketball Power Ratings. Power Ratings take everything into account: home, away, margin of victory, won/lost, recent games, etc. In short, Power Ratings provide the best measurement of how good a team really is.
2. Recent Play
Some NCAA Tournament teams were lousy in November and great in February. Other basketball teams were great in February but lousy in November. If you’re picking a team to go far, the first is probably a lot better than the second. The best way to look at this is to check out the Last Ten Ratings, which give a good indication of who’s playing the best ball right now. Certainly, this isn’t the ONLY factor — slumping teams sometimes miraculously turn things around just in time for the big dance — but it’s a big one.
3. Home-Away-Neutral
There are a handful of teams in the field that have played very well at home, but poorly on the road. Some teams seem to do well at neutral sites. Usually, only being good at home is a bad sign for the NCAA Tournament. To see how teams have played at home and on the road, check out the Away Ratings and the Home Ratings. The Neutral Ratings are probably the best indicator. A warning here, though; many teams have only played two or three games at neutral sites. If that’s the case, don’t overestimate the importance of those games
4. Consistency
Some teams tend to beat the teams they’re supposed to, and lose to the teams they’re supposed to. Others might beat anyone, but might also lose to anyone. One measure for this is a team’s Consistency Rating. If a team has a high consistency rating, they’re less likely to knock off a team ahead of them, but they’re also less likely to get upset.
5. Overall Odds
If you want to win your pool, I wouldn’t advise putting Northwestern State in the Final Four. By looking at the Overall NCAA Tournament Odds, you can get a sense of just how likely it is that your team will make it to a certain spot in the bracket. As we see every year in the conference tournaments and the NCAAs, there are always upsets. But by picking those that are at least moderately likely, the odds of you completely striking out are not as large.
6. Individual Matchups
Rankings certainly can’t express everything in a basketball game. Every team has opponents that it matches up well with, and others that it just doesn’t play well against. For this, I suggest you check out each team’s page, and click on “Results & Scores” to see how that team has fared against different sorts of opponents. One problem here is that most people haven’t seen much of the field of 64, so it’s tough to know about individual matchups.
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