7 strategies for casual fans filling out their March Madness bracket by Tyler Lauletta on Mar 13, 2018, 3:52 PM Advertisement
 For one week in March, offices and classrooms around the country are briefly interrupted by a flurry of bracket building and predictions made by amateur experts. Building the perfect bracket is all but impossible — you have a 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 chance of doing it this year — but that's no reason not to try. Just like any team in the field of 68 can string together a few perfect games to become national champion, any person can put together a bracket and get lucky enough to win their pool. If you're not a die-hard basketball fan, or are almost fully unfamiliar with the sport this year, the prospect of filling out a bracket can be a bit daunting, but it shouldn't be! Anything can happen in the NCAA Tournament, and even the best of experts are only guessing when they suggest their locks for the Sweet 16 and potential upset picks. For those looking to fill out their bracket with less stress, below we've compiled a few suggestions on how to go about working your way through the field of 68 without too much difficulty. Whether you choose to play it safe and pick mostly favorites, or go wild imagining mascot fights, here are a few suggestions for making the process of building your bracket a bit easier. 1. Play it safe and pick the favorites.  If you haven't been keeping up with the college basketball year, or are unaware of the sport in general and just like being involved in your office bracket pool, there's nothing wrong with backing the favorites and playing things safe. While I wouldn't recommend sending all four No. 1 seeds to the Final Four (it's only happened once before in the history of the tournament), if you pick a mix on No. 1, 2, and 3 seeds to make it to the end, and then back Virginia or Villanova as your eventual champion, you'll probably at least make it through the first weekend of the tournament without your bracket getting totally busted. It's not the most exhilarating way to go about filling your bracket, but spice up your first few rounds with a couple upsets and you'll at least have a rooting interest as March Madness takes over every bar television in America for the next three weeks.
2. Trust in championship pedigree  Rather than picking just the favorites from this year's bracket, casual bracket builders can also use historic tournament pedigree as a tool to fill out their entry. This year, there are plenty of lower seeded teams that have proven themselves in the past to be tournament powerhouses. No. 5 Kentucky has made the Final Four four times since 2011, and Tom Izzo has led No. 3 Michigan State through the same gauntlet a whopping seven times since 1999. Perennial tournament contenders UNC, Duke, Gonzaga, and Wichita State also all find themselves without a top seed in their regions this year. If you want to avoid going full chalk with your bracket but still back teams you can trust in the postseason, you could do much worse than picking your favorites among those who have done it before.
3. Pick your favorite stat and follow it to the ends of bracket possibility.  Now we start sliding into the weirder ways of filling out your bracket. When going through team by team, why not select which stats you believe are important in building a championship contender, and work from there? Are you a fan of three point shooting? Purdue is a No. 2 seed and has the best percentage from beyond the arc of all the teams in the field of 68. Do you believe that defense wins championships? No. 1 UVA and No. 2 Cincinnati both have dominated in opponents' points per game. With just a few minutes of data input on a spreadsheet, you can even combine stats you believe to be valuable to create a new statistic all your own. Obviously you don't have to follow your statistical choices as law — I would advise on picking a top seed to beat their No. 16 opponent, even if you're accounting for foul shots and the lesser team has been perfect from the free throw line — but picking a stat you believe in and sticking to it is a great way to make the tough choices towards the end of your bracket, and a fun indicator of potential upset picks you might like to back in the early rounds.
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