Now this is March. The Madness officially began weeks ago, but Selection Sunday – and the bracket reveal which comes with it – marks an introductory to the most thrilling month in collegiate basketball. Filling out said bracket is no easy task, as even the most seasoned basketball fans will feature a blemished four quadrants by the second weekend, if not earlier. Given the frequency of upsets, and the unexpected nature of those upsets, picking every game correctly is nearly impossible.
So, if picking a perfect bracket is out of the question, what is the next-best thing? For most, it is selecting the upset no one else saw coming – and then claiming you watched that team all season long. Will anyone believe you? Likely not, but you'll earn bragging rights for at least the next week. No one has to know you're a casual viewer like the rest of us.
Popular Cinderella stories this year include Akron and Drake, the Zips because of their high-scoring offense and the Bulldogs because of their adorable mascot, Griff II.
March Madness upsets by seeding: Which teams are most prone to surprise?
When picking an upset, it's important to understand the history behind said matchups. I'm not just talking about the teams playing in this tournament, but those that have come before them. The committee seeded the teams 1-68 for a reason. Even if one team is seeded fifth and another twelfth, there have been a high number of 12-5 upsets over the years.
The NCAA went through the data, and the numbers might surprise you – not just by the number of upsets, but the percentage of which the lower-seeded team wins. Note: these numbers are since the 1985 NCAA Tournament.
Lower Seed | Higher Seed | Number of upsets | % of upsets |
|---|---|---|---|
11 | 6 | 61 | 39% |
12 | 5 | 55 | 35% |
13 | 4 | 33 | 21% |
14 | 3 | 23 | 14% |
15 | 2 | 11 | 7% |
16 | 1 | 2 | 1% |
For those hoping to pick an upset correctly, your best bet is to take an 11 seed over a 6 seed, or a 12 over a 5. As the NCAA also points out, winners of the 7-10 matchup have upset the No. 2 seed 46 times in the last 39 tournaments.
How many upsets are in an average bracket?
In a recent study done by the NCAA, the number of true upsets in the last 39 tournaments – or since the field was expanded to 64 teams – traditionally lies somewhere between seven and 13. This does not include No. 8 vs No. 9 matchups, per say. Per the NCAA, the following data is only "when the winning team in an NCAA tournament game was seeded at least five seed lines worse than the losing team."
Based on that definition of an upset, a conservative bracket should include close to seven lower-seeded victories. For those hoping to take a swing or two, 12-14 is the optimal number. The average number of upsets since 1985 sits at around 8.5.
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