OT- How do you do your bracket?
Do you make your picks round by round for the entire bracket or do you break it down into doing each region separately or even breakdown smaller by starting with 16 4 team brackets.
I know it seems like a little thing, but I really believe there is a science behind it and a right way to do it because if you do the entire bracket round by round and you do research, you forget most of your research by time you get to the next round when the team you picked to win the 1st round comes up again, but that may be good thing too.
What are your thoughts?
How do you do your bracket?
Do you think I’m going overboard on this issue?
"FTW"
Is people still getting negged for abbreviations.
I for one would neg anyone who wrote out "for the win".
Physician, neg thyself.
Mascot match-up. Whichever (official) mascot would win in a fight moves on. If that is difficult to determine (ie. Cornell Big Red V. Syracuse Orange) I base it on how the depicted/costumed mascots would fare against each other (Cornell Bear V. Syracuse Orange ...again.)
You're going to have some major issues once you get to the Final Four and have to choose between K-State, Kentucky, and Villanova.
...in these first round matchups:
Lehigh Mountain Hawks and the Kansas Jayhawks?
Utah St Aggies and Texas A&M Aggies?
Missouri Tigers and Clemson Tigers?
Lehigh used to be the Engineers until the last few years, so maybe you use that mascot.
...what mood your bracket is in. A studious approach could work but sometimes you just need to jump right in with reckless abandon.
The one time that I won a bracket, it was right after the 2006 season where Florida squeaked by Michigan into the championship game and OSU got blown out of the water. I picked Florida blowing out OSU in the final game and I got it right.
Something tells me it won't be Florida-Texas in the final game, though, so I will have to choose a new method this year.
coinflip.
This has legit won for me in the past.
I knew a guy who'd do that one year, make the sides of a pencil and roll it another year, and had his dog do half his bracket once. I think his dog did better on it's half.
I gave up on putting any research and thought into my bracket years ago. I can only lose to my girlfriend so many times before I give up and now going forward have the built in excuse that I didn't do any research when she whips me again.
1.) How hot or cold a team is in their last 10 games
2.) Gut-check test: When first looking at the matchup, what is your immediate feeling
3.) Tournament Pedigree
Points 1 and 3 are a little more research based, but I basically run through the bracket once after I accumulate those stats and go with my gut. If you watch enough college basketball, which I'm assuming most Mgobloggers do, your intuition should provide you with a decent enough bracket.
Overthinking is death.
Overthinking is death.So true.
I guess the team I think is more likely to win, and I pick them to advance. I then repeat for rounds 2-6.
Hasn't worked for me yet... but I remain cautiously optimistic.
Sometimes I literally flip a coin. If I have second thoughts about the result after the flip, then I go the other way.
go seed by seed in increasing order. I also check to make sure I've got at least 2 teams above a 4 seed in the sweet 16 and at least one in the Elite 8.
I usually go with my gut. When my gut fails, Ken Pom's ratings are great.
Also, how stacked is the Midwest region? Kansas, OSU, Georgetown, Maryland, and MSU as seeds 1-5? Sounds like a man's region to me...
Kansas and Ohio State got screwed.....while Duke gets Villanova who has lost 5 of their last 7 games. Someone explain to me how they called Kansas the top seed of the entire tournament. They have to run the gauntlet just to get into the Final Four.
Exactly! I don't understand...I really don't. Maybe they've got a bunch of Dookies on the committee? ...
I usually like to take my bracket out for a night on the town. Try to get it drunk an then take it home an do it. It works about 30% of the time.
Go with my gut feeling pretty much. 2 years ago I almost won 250 bucks but Memphis had to lose in the title game! Last year was a complete disaster though.
Very poorly, usually !!!!!!
I do it by colors i like good thing my favorite colors are blue and orange!
Warms my heart :D
fuck that didn't work out cuse uk and ku all gone!!! come on Duke!
1-4 out of final four embarrassing
0-4 I just quit life
I have an incredibly complex proprietary formula that I run through a supercomputer at the NSA. Then I take those results, which make Sagarin's predictor look like a middle school science fair project, and I use another algorithm to take into account the top players' performances over the past 10 games. Those results average 96.34% accuracy.
After I get the results, I throw them away and pick based on which team has the most ferocious mascot.
the winners, works everytime.
You look at regions, and who they have to play, and weigh it against how good they are. That's what makes this year so tough. The #1's toughness of bracket is inverse to how good the teams are. So it makes less cut and dried. Checking WHERE they play can help too. If someone is getting a basic home game for a region final, that can cause problems for the opponent.