March Madness – Are you ready?

If you fill out your bracket by uniform color or how cute you think a mascot is, this is the post for you!

Read more for some history, stats and recommendations! But change your bracket at your own risk!

When and where to watch?

• First Four games have already taken place (or are taking place now). Those teams complete the 64 team bracket
  • Round 1 begins tomorrow (Thursday) at 11:15am CT with 10. Minnesota vs 7. Louisville. Check this post for full round 1 schedule
    • Games run until ~11pm Friday night
  • Round 2 – Sat 3/23 and Sun 3/24
  • Sweet 16 – Thurs 3/28 and Fri 3/29
  • Elite 8 – Sat 3/30 and Sun 3/31
  • Final 4 – Sat 4/6
  • Championship game – Monday April 8^th
• On CBS, truTV, TNT
• CBS paid $19.6Bn for the 2011-2032 TV rights to the tournament

If I want to go to the Final Four, what should I expect?

• You and 94,000 other people who are expected to be in town for the Final Four and bring in $142MM to the city (Minneapolis)
• You’ll need to stay Saturday April 6^th – Monday for the final in Minneapolis, MN
• First time beer and wine will be sold at the tournament!
• Average price for Final Four ticket: $160-$360
• 14 cities in total will host the tournament in total this year

Why is it called March Madness?

• The term March Madness was first used in 1939 in by a magazine in Indiana to describe the excitement of the state around high school basketball.
• However now it’s partially due to the craziness of the bracket or how crazy excited fans get or how crazy the upsets are.
  • In 2018, 60MM tournament brackets were made
    • ~24MM people
    • That totaled $10Bn in wagers
  • Warren Buffet offered any employee $1MM/year for life if they can guess the Sweet 16 completely correct
    • No one has won that yet
  • March Madness cost corporations $4Bn in productivity every year according to a study from WalletHub
  • You have a 1 in 94 quintillion chance of picking a perfect bracket (that’s 17 zeros)
    • According to WalletHub the odds are better of winning back to back lotteries

How does the bracket work?

• It was established in 1939 although it only had 8 teams
  • Expanded to 68 teams in 2010
• There is a selection committee of 10 people that decide who is in or out and what rank the teams receive
  • They are first distributed by region with the top 4 teams being in 4 separate regions
• 32 conferences made the tournament. Here is the breakdown:

• 325 different schools have made the tournament
  • This year debuts Gardner-Webb
• Deadline for bracket entries is tomorrow Thursday at 11:15am CT! The start of the first game of the tournament.

Tips for filling out your bracket:

**Fine print but its big because I want y’all to see it: I do not claim to be good at picking brackets, so I asked for some feedback from friends. Chose to take my/their advice or not AT YOUR OWN RISK. Do not blame me or them for changing your bracket. Yo’ bracket yo’ problem.**

• Picking all #1 seeds in the Final Four sounds like a good idea but it has only happened once in tournament history (Memphis, Kansas, UNC and UCLA in 2008)
  • That being said, a #1 vs #1 championship game has happened 8xs
• #1 seeds do get upset in the first round (it happened last year when #16 UMBC (+20.5) beat #1 UVA). However #1 seeds have an 89% success rate through the round of 32 over the last 8 years according to the Washington Post.
  • As a caveat, UVA tends to play with a slow tempo and these types of teams tend to be open to vulnerability in the tournament.
• Duke is currently ranked #1 in the Top 25 ranking and has the #1 player in the NCAA right now with Zion Williamson
• The Midwest region has the most teams ranked in the AP Top 25 with 8, followed by the South with 7
  • The West has 5 and the East has 4

• Gonzaga has the #1 offense in the country right now
• Florida St is arguably the team on the hottest streak right now, although they lost to UVA in the ACC final.
• Texas Tech has the #1 defense in the nation and have won 9 of their last 10 games
• The lowest seed to win the whole thing is #8 Villanova in 1985, so don’t go too crazy picking the #16 Cinderella story
• Louisville has beaten UNC and Michigan St but blew a 23 point lead over Duke

What players am I expected to know?

• Zion Williamson – Duke – Forward
  • He is arguably the best player in college basketball right now
  • If you’re saying “I don’t follow sports but his name rings a bell” you might be thinking of how he exploded his Nike shoes in the first minute of the UNC-Duke game (biggest rivalry in the sport) and was out for a couple of weeks.
    • This was only kinda a big deal that Nike’s stock dipped ~1% after the game to lose $1.1Bn.
• Grant Williams – Tennessee
  • He is a national POY (player of the year) candidate and is averaging 19.2 points and 7.5 rebounds this season with 38% 3 point shooting percentage.
• Brandon Clarke – Gonzaga – Forward
  • He has 98% shooting efficiency and one of the best defensive players since Gonzaga beat Duke
• Cassius Winston – Michigan St
  • After battling some injuries, he was a finalist for the Naismith trophy and is a standout on the #5 ranked Spartan team
• Ja Morant – Murray St – Point Guard
  • He is ranked top 10 in points per game and is increasingly becoming most people’s #2 projection in the NBA draft in June
• Marcus Howard – Marquette – Point Guard
  • 3 pointer – averaging 25 points per game and he’s hit 50 points once
• Jarrett Culver – Texas Tech – Guard
  • A top 10 prospect for the NAB draft, he’s the leading scorer on the Texas Tech squad which is known for its defense.

Some other fun facts to share around the water cooler while discussing how badly your bracket is doing:

• Most national titles: UCLA with 11
• Last year’s winner: Villanova for their 3rd national championship
• Longest a bracket has stayed perfect: 39 games in 2017 (according to ncaa.com)
• Most #1 seeds: UNC with 18
• Most appearances: Kentucky with 58
• Longest NCAA March Madness drought was Harvard with 66 yrs from 1946 – 2012
  • Dartmouth is the current longest streak with 60 years and counting (since 1959 for those of you who don’t like math)
• 4 schools have yet to reach the tournament (keep in mind this only applies to schools with a ‘major school’ classification given by the Associated Press):
  • Army
  • Citadel
  • Francis Brooklyn
  • William & Mary
• The biggest upset according to the spread was Norfolk St (+21.5) who won 86-84 over Missouri in 2012
• Largest win in championship history was by 30 points UNLV over Duke in 1990
• 7 championship games have gone into OT
  • The 1957 game went into 3OT
• 16 teams have entered the tournament undefeated
  • 4 UCLA teams all went on to win the whole thing
  • Of the other 12, only 3 teams won the whole thing after being undefeated (San Francisco in 1956, UNC in 1957 and Indiana in 1976
• The highest paid coach is Coach Kryzewski (Duke) with a salary of $8.9MM for this season
• Kentucky makes the most money from their basketball program with $246MM in estimated value
• The winning est coach is bracket history is John Wooden with 10 national championships who coached UCLA from 1948-1975
  • Mike Kryzewski (Duke) has 5
  • Roy Williams (UNC) has 3
• Oklahoma is the only team to make the ‘playoffs’ in both football and basketball
• Only 4 schools were ranked in the final rankings of both football and basketball:
  • Kentucky, Michigan, LSU and Iowa St
  • Iowa St finished both rankings in the same spot, #24
  • Indecently Michigan and LSU are also ranked in men’s baseball. If they stay ranked that means they will have a ranked team in all 3 major sports.
• A cool tradition: At the end of the regional rounds and the national championship, the team that wins cuts down the net in celebration. Starting with seniors, the team cuts one strand, ending with the head coach.

Don’t feel too bad, there were no perfect brackets left after Friday night in 2018 due to the #16 UMBC upset of #1 UVA. This year has to be better, right?

Good luck!!