How To Win Your March Madness Bracket Challenge

It's that time of year again, where for a few weeks, NCAA Basketball reigns supreme in the world of sports, providing a helpful bridge to Opening Day and the NBA Playoffs. That's right, it's March Madness!!!! Clinically proven to reduce productivity already, the NCAA ands CBS have gone a step further and you can now watch every game, live, right from your computer! That's right, you can suck up all of your office's bandwidth and not miss a second of action!

I have been participating in various office/bar March Madness pools for over 20 years. In that time, I've been an outright winner at least 6 times, including last year. That's a pretty high percentage in something as random as the NCAA Tournament. With that in mind, and being quite confident that no one actually reads the stuff I put on here (so I don't have to worry about the competition), I'm offering up 10 tips to help you win your March Madness Bracket Challenge. And away we go!

10. Don't Be A Homer!!! Look, I'm the biggest Homer of them all, but if you want to win, you've got let it go. Unless you live on Tobacco Road, face it, most years picking your hometown team to get past the first couple of rounds is bracket suicide. Sport your team colors, root hard for them in every game, but DON'T pick them to go to the Final Four. Trust me here.

9. Live By The 1 Seed, Die By the 1 Seed While we all know that all 4 #1 seeds never make it to the Final Four, they also never lose to a 16. Look, the single most important thing you can do to win your bracket is to get those 4 teams right. If you don't, you're toast. Keep the 1s till the Sweet 16, and your chances of taking it all improve dramatically.

8. The 5 to 12 Slot Here's where you can up your Games Won stats dramatically. It is where the so-called upsets happen. Your 5/12, 6/11, 7/10 and 8/9 match-ups are the biggest crap shoots of the Tourney. These games are where you need to do your homework. Look at the match-ups carefully. Just because one team has a higher seed, doesn't necessarily mean they are the most likely team to win. These are the games where a deadly 3 point shooting team that averages 90 points a game in a weak conference will take out a mediocre team from an elite conference. These are the games where a team that is only in the Tournament due to an unexpected win in their conference tourney giving them an automatic bid falls to a team you've never heard of. They are also the games where a great team's late season skid dropped them to an 11 seed, but their starting point guard is back and they are a much better team when he's on the floor. These games are what seperates the basketball geeks from the people who fill out their brackets based on uniform color or mascot.

7. The Sleeper The Sleeper usually comes from the 8 to 12 Slot. The Sleeper is usually a young team with a budding Superstar. It is a team that has shown flashes of brilliance all season long, as well as occasionally looking like they ought to be playing intramural ball instead. But the budding Superstar comes up big in the Tourney, cementing his Stud Status. He doesn't take the team to the promised land, but they go to the Sweet 16 or Elite 8. Look for the team that has a freshman or sophmore who is going to be high on the NBA draft boards in June, even though he's raw and not quite ready.

6. Don't Put Cinderella On The Dance Card Every few years, some 12 or 14 seed stuns the world and makes an improbable run deep into the Tournament, causing a backlash of poor Bracket choices for years. Here's the thing, remember I said earlier that the most important thing you can do is pick the Final Four, right? Well, Cinderella doesn't make the Final Four. She might look good in that prom gown, but we all know she's going back to mopping floors, and it's happening at about 8:30, not midnight.

5. Defense Wins Championships Things are different when you make it to the Dance. If you've got a team that put up 88 PPG during the regular season, but gave up 85, if you've got them going deep, you're not going to be crowned Champ. Remember, chances are all those high scoring games were against teams that are at home watching on TV right now.

4. Except When It Doesn't There are, of course, exceptions to every rule. Every year, there are few teams that can score at will, inside and out. Those rare teams that aren't defensive stoppers but have a balanced attack that can burn you on the break or eat clock and crush you with 3 point daggers stand a good chance. But do your homework. These teams have to have dominated all season long. They can't have any serious flaws and they have to be painfully consistent. We have one of these teams this year. I'll let you figure out who. I can't give away ALL of my secrets.

3. The 8-Ball The Elite Eight is where things start to get dangerous. It is where the giants fall. This is where you can expect to lose some of those vaunted 1 seeds. Like the 5 to 12 Slot, this is where the hoops geeks need to do their work. Carefully analyze your potential match-ups, looking at the how the strengths of the lower seeds stand up against the weaknesses of the higher seeds. There's a 2, 3, or 4 waiting to pounce now, they've got momentum on their side and will look to exploit holes in Number One's armor. Here is where you seal the deal. Pick right here and you've got the Final Four locked down, and your competition has fallen by the wayside.

2. Go With The Gut(s) So you've narrowed it down to your Final Four predicitions. There is no science now, every one of these teams deserves to be here, and every one could win it all. Now you take everything you know about hoops, and knock out two teams. You're at the National Championship Game. Which team has the Will To Win??? That's what it comes down to, and you've just got to go with your gut and their guts to pick a winner.

1. The Magic Number Finally, you've got to remember to not ignore the tie-breaker. Picking the total points scored is easy. It will be in the 130s. Trust me here. You don't get high scoring games at this point in the tournament, for several reasons, not the least of which is that the teams went from having tons of games in quick succession to having a week off, then an emotionally charged game two days prior. They come out a little cold, a little flat, and eveybody steps up the defensive pressure. Don't pick too high, or too low, you'll be fine, and you'll be the 2008 NCAA March Madness Champion.





There you have it, a sure fire way to put yourself in contention for a year of bragging rights. You can thank me later.




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