NCAA Basketball Tournament Bracketology -- Picking the Upsets, Cinderellas, and Dark Horses

Bracketology, that study of and prognostication of the outcome of the NCAA Basketball Tournament bracket (otherwise known as "picking the winners"), is not an exact science. If it was, there wouldn't be so many "experts" on the subject with so many varied opinions on how brackets break down until a champion is rendered. If it was an exact science, the NCAA Selection Committee would have preordained the final outcome by the way they eventually seeded the teams. The 2010 NCAA Basketball Tournament bracket would end with a final game between the #1 overall seed, Kansas, against the #2 overall seed, Kentucky, with Kansas as the champion. And if that were the way it unfailingly worked, there would be no excitement of competition, no anticipation of upsets, no dark horses, and no Cinderella stories -- that intangible "on any given day" scenario that watches hope spring eternal in a contest between two teams, no matter how evenly or unevenly matched.

Basketball -- and, therefore, bracketology -- doesn't allow exactness to enter into it. Certainly there is room for high probability. The teams who have won more games and have played tougher, better teams with higher caliber ballplayers more likely as not will win in a given contest. These are the teams that are constantly ranked and continually playing against each other, testing their teams and their records. They are also the higher seeded teams. But there are times when even the best teams fail, when the greatest ballplayer in the country has a bad game, where the team as a whole falls apart in a series of cascading events that precipitates a loss (sometimes, embarrassingly enough, against a heavily outmatched underdog). And it is in these human intangibles -- these moments of personal and team uncertainty, frailty, and/or incompleteness -- where the bracketology buff might be able to effectively predict an upset and champion a Cinderella or dark horse team (or teams) within a bracket.

Knowing the particular teams and how they play gives the bracketologist an edge in making a choice. Comparing playing styles with how the teams did against teams of like style as their current opponent can be an indicator of how they might fare in the current match-up. Keeping up with the roster of a team keeps the bracketologists aware of team problems, arrests, injuries, or personal problems (such as academics or a death in a player's family) that might affect a player or players on a particular team. Knowledge that a player has been in a slump for several games, for whatever reason, could be used to factor in whether or not a team is deserving of support.

Predicting an unknown outcome successfully comes down to knowledge, a knowledge of variables and how they interact. And still, no matter one's degree of knowledge, there is no 100% guarantee that the choice made will be correct in the end. But how do you choose your bracket so that you can effectively pick that potential upset or a three-game run by a Cinderella team with a higher degree of success? Homework. Study. Education.

Of course, there are always alternate, easier, and less successful methods of choosing the potential upset. Guessing, going with hunches, going with a particular school's colors over that of another, flipping a coin, and any number of ways can be used to choose one's bracket, including a Cinderella or two. But knowing that the #3 seed's two starting guards have the flu and their best bench player has a strained hamstring might be a sign of disadvantage against a little known team showing no signs of injuries or team problems with a 20-game winning record. One just might want to pick an upset in this match-up. But, then, perhaps not...

Decisions, decisions. Predicting an NCAA Basketball Tournament bracket isn't an exact science. Where would be the fun in that?

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Viewable 2010 NCAA Basketball Tournament bracket.

Printable 2010 NCAA Basketball Tournament bracket.

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Source:

CBSSports.com