With the 2022 NCAA March Madness basketball tournament having concluded this past week, I thought I would take this opportunity to share some thoughts about the tournament and lessons I have learned on how to pick the winners going forward.  As I previously shared during last year’s tournament, I fill out a bracket each year with my friend Brian, in which we pick the winners based entirely on who would win a fight between the team’s mascots.  (For example, who would win a fight between a wildcat and a peacock?)  This bracket never actually does well, and this year was no exception.  The rules for how we fill out our bracket can be found on my previous March Madness post from last year.

Before I go any further, I also want to present a riddle for you to figure out.  This is a problem that I used to give my math students back in my teaching days, called the “Big Loser.”  I’ll present the problem here and then give you the solution at the end of this post, as a reward for actually reading the whole thing (or for at least taking the time to skip down to the end).  We know by now that Kansas won this year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament.  But who was the “big loser” of the tournament?  For the purpose of this problem, we ignore the extra four teams from the official 68-team field, as we are not counting the four teams that lost in the “play-in” rounds.  (This was so much better back when the tournament was a perfect 64-team field.)  So, out of the final 64 teams, who was the big loser?  It’s one thing to be Texas Southern, lose to Kansas in the first round, and then watch them win the championship.  They can at least say, “We lost in the first round, but the team that beat us won the whole thing, so there’s no shame in that.”  But which team lost in the first round, only for the team that beat them to lose their very next game, to a team who would then lose their next game, and so on, for each round of the tournament?  Only one team has that claim to shame each year.  So, who was it?  Take a moment to figure it out, then keep reading, then I will give the answer at the end.

But back to our predictions for this year.  The 2022 NCAA basketball tournament featured a first-round matchup between the Duke Blue Devils, who usually go far or even win our brackets, and the Cal State Fullerton Titans.  Because Titans are Greek gods, and gods beat devils, we had the 15-seed Titans pulling the first-round upset over the Blue Devils and going all the way.  The Titans would win the whole thing in our bracket, beating the 10-seed Miami Hurricanes in the final.  Having a Final Four consisting of a 10, 14, 15, and 16 seed is a pretty bold move, but then again, this bracket does not take realism into account.  Obviously, this did not happen in real life, with the Blue Devils beating the Titans and then going all the way to the Final Four, and the Kansas Jayhawks winning the actual championship despite being a bird.

My real bracket (the one where I actually try) did a little bit better than that, but not by much.  In my real bracket, I predicted #1-ranked Gonzaga to win the whole thing, only for them to lose in the third round.  I also didn’t predict any of the Final Four teams correctly.  So, between my actual bracket and our nickname bracket both doing terribly, why should you listen to any advice I have to give when it comes to picking the winners in the future?  Here are a few lessons I have learned:

Lesson #1 (from the time I actually won a bracket contest):  Pick all the favorites, with only one or two exceptions.  Last year, my office had a bracket contest for both the 2021 men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments.  My men’s bracket did terribly last year too, but I won the contest for the women’s tournament, despite putting almost no thought into it whatsoever.  My strategy for filling out my women’s bracket was, I predicted all the better seeds to win every game.  Well, almost every game.  I had to make my bracket different in one aspect to avoid tying with lots of other people who would also blindly pick the better seed for each game. So, I predicted Indiana, a 4-seed in last year’s tournament, to advance to the Elite Eight, which they then did.  This gave me the edge over everyone who blindly picked the better seeds to win every game.  It’s amazing how well this strategy does compared to the typical bracket that picks a few upsets here and there (and inevitably picks the wrong ones). When #1-ranked Stanford then won last year’s tournament, I had secured my crown as 2021 office bracket champion.  Since this was an office contest, my company gave me a basketball and a mask as my winning prizes.  The office did not do a bracket contest this year, so I didn’t have a chance to defend my title, so I guess I’m still the reigning champion.

The lesson here from this example is that sometimes it’s better to just pick the better seed to win almost all the games.  If I had stuck to that advice, my men’s bracket this year would have done much better this year.  Granted, it would have still resulted in me picking Gonzaga, who lost in the third round, so it still wouldn’t have done great; just…better than it actually did.  It would have at least solved the problem of my picking all the wrong upsets.  This way, even if something unexpected happens, such as an 8-seed like North Carolina making the championship game, that’s fine, because that sort of thing messes up everyone else’s bracket too.

Lesson #2:  Pick teams who wear blue.  This lesson might sometimes conflict with the first lesson to pick the better seed, but since you have to pick at least one upset, or maybe a few, when in doubt, go with the school who wears blue as its primary color.  Case in point: this year, all four of the teams in the Final Four (Kansas, North Carolina, Duke, and Villanova) wear blue as their main color.  In fact, if you look back through recent history, all 15 NCAA men’s basketball champions from 2004-2019 wore blue as their primary color.*  Past champions during this time include Virginia, Villanova, North Carolina, Duke, Connecticut, Kentucky, Kansas, and Florida.  Other blue schools such as Gonzaga, Michigan, Butler, Memphis, and UCLA have come very close with runner-up finishes during those years.  So, in the future, when trying to decide which team to pick, go with the school with blue as one of their colors.

*This list does not count Louisville, who won the NCAA tournament in 2013.  Although their colors are red and white, they were later stripped of their title because of violations.  Officially, there was no champion in 2013, thus keeping this streak of blue intact during those years.

I would also extrapolate this lesson to any schools who want to win more.  Indiana, I’m looking at you.  Perhaps the way to get back to the glory days of 1987 is to add blue to the old cream and crimson.  Purdue, same to you…maybe change the black and gold to blue and gold, and you can finally break through and win that ever-elusive championship.  Just a thought.

Lesson #3:  If a school is playing a tournament game on “National (Insert Team Nickname Here) Day,” that team will win.  On March 25, we witnessed the Saint Peter’s Peacocks upset heavily-favored Purdue on National Peacock Day.  Of course, there doesn’t seem to be any documented evidence that dates prior to March 20 of the existence of National Peacock Day.  It appears that this was likely a holiday that was made up in the days leading up to the game and proclaimed to be March 25 because that was the day the Peacocks were about to play Purdue.  So, of course nobody could have predicted this when filling out their brackets originally, but now the word is out.  If you know that a team will be playing a tournament game on National (their nickname) Day, pick that team to win.

I would also extrapolate this lesson to any schools who want to win a big tournament game.  Note to the Butler Bulldogs, if you make the 2023 tournament, declare a National Bulldog Day to be the day of a tournament game.  Notre Dame Fighting Irish…well, you already have St. Patrick’s Day.  This already works for the Irish, as they won a tournament game in double overtime this year just minutes after the clock struck midnight to ring in March 17.  But if your school doesn’t already have a special day lined up, just declare a National (nickname) Day on the day of your game to guarantee victory.

With that said, I hope you enjoyed the action this year, and that your brackets did better than mine.  Congratulations to the Kansas Jayhawks as the men’s tournament champions and the South Carolina Gamecocks as the women’s tournament champions for 2022.  Now we only have to wait another 11 months for next year’s March Madness brackets to come out.

Answer:  This year’s big loser was Boise State.  They lost to Memphis in the first round, only to have Memphis lose to Gonzaga, who then lost to Arkansas, who lost to Duke, who lost to North Carolina, who lost to Kansas.  Sorry, Boise State.