NCAA Tournament tips for picking your March Madness brackets

I never seem to have much success at picking March Madness brackets, so my advice is only so-so when it comes to the NCAA Tournament. But thanks to Pregame.com, we can offer you some outstanding NCAA Tournament tips for your March Madness brackets. Keep in mind that the numbers don’t dictate what will happen, they just give you a great idea of what has historically happened.

FIRST ROUND
– Don’t pick any 15 or 16 seeds to win (they’re a combined 4-216)
– Pick at least one 13 or 14 seed to win (they’ve combined to win 18% of first-round games)
– Pick 9 seeds to beat 8 seeds (they’re six games over .500 vs. 8 seeds)

SECOND ROUND
– Pick No. 1 seeds to reach the Sweet 16 (88% of them make it)
– Advance 10 and 12 seed to the Sweet 16 (they win 2nd round games about half the time)
– Don’t pick teams seeded below 12 to reach Sweet 16 (only 6 of 432 teams (1.4%) advancing past Round 2 were seeded worse than #12)

SWEET 16
– 72% of No. 1 seeds reach the Elite 8, so pick 3 to make it
– Don’t put a team seeded lower than 11 in the Elite 8 (only 1 has reached it)

A few other really good notes to keep in mind:
– Only 6 times since 1979 have two 1 seeds made the finals
– Teams seeded lower than 8 hardly reach the Final Four (only 3 of 108 teams have)
– Only one team seeded lower than 6 has reached the championship game

There will always be exceptions to these stats, but they provide an excellent guideline for making your picks.