March Madness – Updated 2022 Version

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

This post has everything from some history, stats to complicated 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 Thursday at 11:15am CT with Michigan vs Colorado State
    • Check this post for full Round 1 schedule
    • Games run until ~11pm Friday night
  • Round 2 – Sat 3/19 and Sun 3/20
  • Sweet 16 – Thurs 3/24 and Fri 3/25
  • Elite 8 – Sat 3/26 and Sun 3/27
  • Final 4 – Sat 4/2
  • Championship game – Monday April 4^th
• On CBS, truTV, TNT
• CBS paid $19.6Bn for the 2011-2032 TV rights to the tournament

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.
• Now it is aptly named for the NCAAM tournament due to the craziness of the bracket or how excited fans get and how unbelievable 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
• The most correct bracket ever was in 2019 when an Ohio man correctly guessed the first 49 outcomes – that took him into the Sweet 16
• In 2021, every last bracket was busted by game 28

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. The Big Ten has the most teams in with 9 followed by the Big East, Big 12 and SEC with 6 each.

• The East region of the bracket has the most teams ranked in the Top 25 with 7 while all 3 of the other regions have 6. 
• 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.**

• Gonzaga is currently the #1 seed going into the tournament and was runner up last year.
• 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 have an 89% success rate through the round of 32 over the last 8 years according to the Washington Post. There has also never been an Elite Eight without a #1 seed present. 33 of 36 Elite Eights have had at least 2 top seeds. Only 8xs have all four #1 seeds made the Elite Eight.

• It’s hard to be defending champion *cough* Baylor. It has been 15 years since a repeat team (Florida in 2006 & 2007) and since then no defending champ has even made it past the Sweet 16.
• Also working against Baylor: They lost their first conference tournament game. No team has ever won after losing their first game in the conference tournaments. This rule also applies to Auburn, Wisconsin and Illinois.
• At least 1 team as a top-four seed will lose in Round 1. Only 1x of the last 13 tournaments (and 5 of 36) have all the top-four seeds and above made it through round 1.
• Arizona is in a sticky spot. They are a top-two seed and are in the Top 10 in the AP poll. None of the 33 teams in the modern era with those characteristics have reached the Final Four and 55% of them didn’t make it passed the first 2 rounds.

• Boise St has never won a tournament game. The Broncos are 0-7
• Loyola has made 2 consecutive tournaments, the last time they did that, they won the whole thing (1963 & 1964)
• Davidson is back in the tournament but hasn’t won a game in the tournament since Steph Curry played for them (Elite Eight 2008). This time they rank in the Top 10 in offense efficiency
• Big 12 Waring: #3 seeds win 85% of the #14 seed matchups. However, the past four #3s to lose in the first round were all in the Big 12 conference (with no repeats). And there is another Big 12 #3 seed this year… Texas Tech

• Want to pick an upset? Go with a #13 seed facing a #4. At least 1 has won in the last 26 of 36 tournaments. Last year there were multiple successful #13 seeds
  • The best bet this year might be South Dakota St, who are only 2-point underdogs to Providence. SDSt also went undefeated in their conference (18-0 Summit)
  • If a team is favored by 13 points or more though, don’t touch that upset pick – they’re 13-0 in those situations. So don’t pick Akron over UCLA
• Pick at least 1 double-digit team to make the Sweet 16. Most often it is 3 so pick anywhere from 1-3 teams.

• #11s seem to be the most successful Cinderella stories of late. 9 of the last 11 Sweet 16s have had at least 1 #11 seed.
  • Last year #11 UCLA made it from the First Four to the Final Four
• The most picked upset category is the #5 vs #12. And it’s not unwarranted #5s have only won 59.5% of the time since 2002.
• The coin flip 8 vs 9 seed is actually favored towards the 9s but barely (73 to 71)

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: Baylor
• Most #1 seeds: UNC with 18
• Most appearances: Kentucky with 59
  • This year we have Bryant and Longwood making their tournament debuts.
• Longest NCAA March Madness drought was Harvard with 66 yrs from 1946 – 2012
  • Dartmouth is the current longest streak with 61 years and counting (since 1959 for those of you who don’t like math and not counting the COVID year)
• 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. Technically that is still the biggest upset by spread. However in 2018, UMBC (a 16 seed) beat UVA (a #1 seed) for the first time in 135 tries. UVA had only lost 2 games that season by a total of 8 points and they lost to UMBC by 20 points! The spread here was 20.5.
• 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

• Kentucky makes the most money from their basketball program with $246MM in estimated value
• The winningest coach is bracket history is John Wooden with 10 national championships who coached UCLA from 1948-1975
  • Mike Kryzewski (Duke) has 5 but the most games won by a single coach at 97
  • Roy Williams (UNC) has 3
• Alabama and Michigan made the ‘playoffs’ in both football and basketball
• Only 5 schools were ranked in the final rankings of both football and basketball:
  • Baylor, Kentucky, Houston, Iowa and Arkansas
  • Indecently Arkansas is 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 Game 28 last year. This year has to be better, right?

Good luck!!