Nielsen on March Madness: Want my advice?

Almost a year has passed since that plucky group from Connecticut shocked the world and won the NCAA basketball title.

I have a few less hairs on top of my head since that night, but since the brackets have been released it means it is time for my annual advice blog for your brackets.

As I said a year ago, it should be easy to select the winners as a group of men have been locked in a room for over a week, spending hours creating the brackets, yet rarely does the top team win the title and that is also why this is everyone’s favourite office pool.

Much like the tournament itself, the office favourites win the title.

I won’t give you the winner but I will provide you with a few simple tips for making sure your chance of claiming the big prize is that much easier.

Rule No. 1: As soon as you are handed your bracket, take the No. 1 seed in each region and advance them two rounds. Then take the No. 2 seed in each region and advance them one round. This rule held true to form again last year.

Yes, you need to take a few underdogs but save your Houdini-like picks for lower seeds or later rounds. A No. 1 seed has never lost in the opening round and only four No. 2 seeds have been taken down in Round 1.

The last time a No. 15 seed won a game was back in 2001 when Hampton knocked off Iowa State.

A year ago, they added the new “first” round to the tournament. I assumed that this extra game would be an obstacle that would be too much to overcome for the entrants and boy was I wrong. VCU knocked off USC on the first Tuesday of the tournament and rode that momentum to a shocking Final Four appearance. (BTW — I also said, I am reserving the right to take a mulligan on this since I believe Georgetown and the Thompson family are historic chokers, (remember 1985?) — I am giving myself the good old Barry Horowitz for that one.)

So which team could be this year’s VCU?

The California Golden Bears would be the best bet but, I am still going to chalk that VCU run up to an aberration.

Anyways, after you advance the top seeds, start looking at the 8-9 seed games. This is where you should see a couple of minor upsets as well. In the past, 54 per cent of No. 9 seeds have advanced, although last year they went one-for-four. Now, as the seed gets higher, there is less likelihood that the team will win; however, besides the aforementioned 8-9 game there is one other exception to that rule.

There have been 108 first-round games for each seed since the current format of the tournament was adopted back in 1985. The No. 12 seed has won 36 times and the No. 11 seed has won 36 times. Even odds. Now, here is where a new wrinkle in my plan will help you out: If you are stuck at which team to select when you feel as though two teams are evenly matched, there are a couple of web sites out there that can help you in your decision-making.

The most obvious one would be to check the gambling lines. Vegas bookmakers put more study into this than you do so they may be able to help you one way or the other. That being said, you need to remember that the goal of bookmakers is to make sure that both sides are bet evenly, not necessarily to make certain that they get the score right. So if a public (popular team with casual bettors) team like Duke or Kentucky is involved, you know they are going to push the line higher than it need be in some cases in order to get the total money waged to go closer to even.

Sometimes seeing how the betting lines have moved will also give you a good idea on how to make your picks as well.

Confused yet?

Another site worth checking out is kenpom.com. This is a statistical based site which has gained some notoriety in the college basketball world over recent seasons as Ken Pomeroy has been right about 73 per cent of the time. I wouldn’t ask you to crunch the numbers unless you are really good with them, but I would suggest that the rankings may help make your decision if you are in a pickle.

OK, our friends from Butler have made us look like idiots over the past couple of years as they made the final, but they didn’t win the big prize. (Thankfully, they aren’t in the tournament this year.) This brings me back to another important rule — a non-BCS school hasn’t won a title since UNLV back in 1990. Now, if you don’t know what a BCS school is, I will allow you in on another little secret tool of mine called Google. That means I am eliminating the Mormons (BYU and Utah St.), the Hippies (Gonzaga) and the Aztecs (San Diego St.) from winning the tournament.

You can’t trust hippies anyways. That doesn’t mean they won’t advance but it does mean they won’t win the title.

This year’s favourites are like a who’s who of the usual suspects and they include Syracuse, North Carolina, Michigan State, Kansas, Duke, Ohio St. and Kentucky. If you stray from this core group and pick a team like Florida State or Gonzaga all the best to you and thank you for your donation.

That being said, there are a couple of dark horses that seem like interesting plays; Wichita St., Florida and Louisville spring to mind.

So – hopefully I have made your life just a little easier if only for my first rule.

Best of luck as we enter the Madness.