My goal is to give you some tips on how to beat the odds over the average person in your pool. Picking only the higher seeds is not going to make a hill of beans by the championship game, picking a lot of upsets is very risky and usually doesn't pay off, so hopefully you'll do better in this years office pool. I've analyzed the winning pick sheets and here are a few tips and trends I've noticed through the years of my winners.
Here are my 21 Tips To Win This Years Office Pool
- Always pick last years championship team to repeat as champs if they return all five starters.
- Pick all of the number 1 seeds to win their first round games. Since 1985, all number 1 seeds have won their games over the number 16 seeds 100% of the time.
- Don't pick a number 1 seed to be one of the last four teams, let along the national title, if the school wasn't in the playoffs the previous year.
- Pick at least one number 2 seed to lose before the second round games complete.
- Don't pick more than two of the four number 1 regional seeds to reach the final weekend of games when only four teams remain in the tournament.
- Pick at one number 3 seed team to lose in the first round of games.
- Pick a team seeded 1 or 2 [there will be eight of them] to win the national title.
- Don't pick more than two of the four number 1 seeds to be the last four teams in the tournament. In 2006, not one of the number 1 seeds made it to the championship weekend. I'd call it a fluke year.
- Pick one team seeded 12th to reach the regional semi finals.
- Despite some success, and I do mean some, don't go too far with the number 4 and 5 seeds.
- Pick two teams seeded 13th to 15th to be victorious over teams seeded 2nd to 4th.
- Don't pick a team from the Big Sky, MEAC and Southland to win a first-round game. They're winless in the Division I playoffs since the field was expanded to at least 52 teams in 1983.
- Don't pick an at-large team with a losing conference record to get beyond the second round.
- Two of your Final Four picks should be teams that didn't finish atop their regular-season conference standings.
- Don't be too concerned about a regular-season defeat against a conference rival with a losing league record.
- Don't pick a team to reach the Final Four if it lost in the first round of a postseason conference tournament.
- Don't pick a team seeded #16 to #13 into the field of 8. Not once has one ever advanced.
- Do pick three #1 seeds into the field of 8. 70% of all number 1 seeds have advanced to the fourth round of games.
- Don't pick a team seeded #16 to #9 into the field of 4, only two times has a team in this range advanced to the field of 4 [George Mason in 2006 was the last]
- Don't pick a team seeded lower than a #6 to the championship game, not a single one has advanced in the last 21 years.
- Do pick a seed ranked #4 or higher to win the championship game. For 18 straight years, this has been true.