Filling out your bracket but nor sure how to approach it? We’ve got you covered.
Before jumping right in, I’d like to suggest that we adopt the phrase “more than one way to fill out a bracket” to replace “more than one way to skin a cat”.
I don’t love cats, but I can think of 1,000 better ways to say “1,000 different ways” and none of them reference animal cruelty. We already have several cat-centric idioms (none of them pleasant) and I’d be willing to guess that far more people fill out brackets than skin cats these days.
So yea, you know what they say… there’s more than one way to fill out a bracket.
I’ve used several different approaches over the years, most of them unsuccessfully. I have won two pools that I can remember (no big deal) and the most successful bracket in my 15ish tries was one I rushed through and put zero into. I applied the same approach the following year but finished something like 27th of 30 entries so it wasn’t exactly a proven winner.
In 2012, I went the route of best coaches. I remember it specifically because Duke (who has a pretty good coach) got bounced by Lehigh in the first round and I went oh for the Final Four. The only time my bracket turned out worse than that was the year I decided to research every game. Never making that mistake again.
Some people pick based on conference, some on defense, some on guard play, some on seniority. Some people listen to input from the “experts” to make their picks but just as an example in 2017 Jay Bilas finished around the 5,000 mark of 35,000 bracket in his ESPN.com group.
My personal hero and guiding light, Stu Gotz, finished in the bottom 10,000 of 36,000 in the Le Betard Show’s pool. I don’t like admitting it, but Dickie V’s bracket was top 98th percentile last year. It was the best he’s ever done and I don’t expect him to repeat. I have to watch games that he calls on mute so I’m not about to listen to him talk without a game being played anyway.
The main point is that experts are inconsistent too so don’t go with whatever the guy on ESPN says. There’s just no way to watch enough to have really informed thoughts on every team plus the same biases that influence everyone else usually influences these guys.
I write about college sports for a living so have probably watching more basketball than most people but I haven’t watched a single minute of a single game for probably 35-40 of the 68 teams. I had to google UMBC to figure out what it stood for and I didn’t know Wright State was a college until this week.
I clearly don’t have the answer to the best bracket strategy (or many other things). I do have some ideas though. Some involved serious thought, others not so much. Let me know if you employ one or more of these successfully. If they crash and burn, no need to report back, I’ll figure it out.