Tips for Making Your NCAA Tournament Picks

It's that time of year - time to start thinking about which teams to make your NCAA Tournament picks in your office pool. When you're looking at 65 different teams, many of whom you may have never even heard of, let alone see play, making your NCAA Tournament picks can be difficult. There are two distinct strategies that folks use in making their NCAA Tournament picks, which are sometimes combined to come up with overall bracket picks. We'll review both strategies for making your NCAA Tournament picks here, stating the pros and cons of each.

Strategy 1: Study the teams when making your NCAA Tournament picks. This can be a very time-consuming strategy for making your NCAA Tournament picks, since you may or may not be familiar with which teams and conferences are the strongest. For example, a team that is fourth or fifth in the Big East may have faced much stronger competition than the winner of the Atlantic 10 conferences and may be a better NCAA Tournament pick. You can't make your NCAA Tournament picks based upon wins and losses alone, as there are always upset winners, so in order to use this strategy effectively, you'll have to look at how the teams playing styles match up with each other.

Pros: Even if you lose, you'll sound impressive at the office when talking about how one team's strong defense matches up against another team's run-and-gun style.

Cons: This will take a lot of time in the early rounds, especially when considering all 65 teams.

Strategy 2: Pick the teams you know. I have to admit that this is the strategy that has worked best for me in the past, although it is not the most scientific way to make your NCAA Tournament picks. I can't say that I even look at the records of these teams - I just make my NCAA Tournament picks based upon whether or not a team is in my area or if I know someone who went to the school. If the "teams that you know" are long shots, take heart, as there are always upsets in the NCAA Tournament, so you always have a chance to win. The big mistake that I made in using this strategy to make my NCAA Tournament picks is not changing back over to picking the stronger team in the Sweet 16 round. In the year that I did the best in my NCAA Tournament picks, I was winning the office pool through the second round, but I picked Kent State and other long shots to make it to the Final Four - not good. If I had changed up my NCAA Tournament picks and followed Strategy 1 at this point, I probably would have won the pool.

Pros: This makes watching the NCAA Tournament more fun as you are rooting for the teams that you know to win anyways.

Cons: If you win using this method, your coworkers will accuse you of making your NCAA Tournament picks based on team colors and mascots (definitely less scientific than this strategy).