SPORTS: Bracket Stats

BY: ELI SMITH

MARCH 13, 2023

March. A month known by many as the month of Madness, but why is this? It is because of the 68-team College Basketball tournament that takes place in all regions of the country throughout the month of March;  the tournament played in America’s major cities in the Midwest, East, South, and West regions of the United States. The part that most people are interested in though is the making of the brackets. Predicting what teams have what it takes to make a final four or teams that upset higher seeds. It really is all a guessing game, cause if you know anything about March Madness, it is to expect the unexpected.

When it comes to making a bracket, you are basically picking teams at random to win games. You would think that you should always pick the better team to win the game. This is not true. In the last two tournaments a 15 seed has beaten a 2 seed in both tournaments. With both of those 15 seeds winning their next game, and one of them winning their next two games. Although there have been multiple 15 seeds win their first round matchups against 2 seeds, number 1 seeds have dominated 16 seeds. All the way up until 2018, there had been no 16 seed beat a 1 seed in the Men’s tournament. That was until the UMBC Ramblers knocked off the number 1 overall seed in Virginia by 20 points. Despite this, that same Virginia 2018 team  returned to the tournament and won a national title the very next year in 2019 – The ultimate turnaround from heartbreak to triumph.

There are a lot of interesting facts that surround all of the numbers that go into the tournament. With one of the craziest ones being the odds of predicting an entire bracket perfectly. The odds to make a perfect bracket are 1 in 9,223,372,036,834,775,808. Which basically means it is almost impossible to make a perfect bracket. Every year at least 95% of online brackets that are filled out already have at least one mistake during the first round. There are a lot of people that have good brackets or pick the eventual champion, but creating a perfect one just is not something you are going to see. 

Another crazy stat is that in the 83 years that the basketball tournament has been held, only one team has won the National Title while also having lost at least 10 games throughout the rest of the year. That team being the 1988 Kansas Jayhawks that finished the year with a record of 27-11. There have been many teams that have won the title with nine losses, but only the one team that had double digit losses. So if you’re picking your champion I wouldn’t be picking a team with double digit losses.

 Out of all of the seeds in the entire tournament there have been 7 different seeds win the tournament. With all of those seeds being in the top 8 seeds in their region. This means that there is one seed within the top 8 in their region that has never won. That seed is the number 5 seed. There have been multiple instances where the number 5 seed has made the title game, but they have never won it all. 

When it comes to picking your Final Four, 95% of the time at least one number 1 seed makes it to the Final Four. Although only one time in history, all four of the 1 seeds have made the Final Four. So when making your bracket it would be smart to put at least one top seed in the final four but quite risky to put all four.

The madness will be starting next Tuesday in Dayton for the First Four. With the First Round beginning on Thursday at around 11:00. From then on the weekend will be filled with excitement and heartbreak as 64 different teams all fight for the same goal, the goal of being a National Champion.