Tyler Stearns |
As I began making my March Madness bracket, as I do annually, I thought back and realized that I hadn’t watched a single game of College Basketball this year. I started to panic. My bracket was never going to be perfect, but I am in a competitive March Madness bracket group and I want to win. I started to think of ways to make a bracket, to study different teams, their stats, their players, how they play, their coaches, etc. After about an hour of research, I realized that it wasn’t really necessary. I realized that I just had to pick from my gut.
Watching Jay Bilas’s analysis and bracket creation wasn’t going to be original or fun in any way. The whole point of making the bracket is to enjoy it and hope that your teams come through. If you are picking based on an expert, then you are kind of destroying the whole point of the bracket.
So here is how I did it. I chose three teams that I had heard this year were good, plus UConn who won that national championship last year in dominant fashion. The teams I chose were North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Along with UConn, those are my final four picks.
For the earlier rounds, I picked teams who I trusted and teams who looked like they would be fun. Three teams I trust are Iowa State, Gonzaga, and Duke. After that, I picked some fun upsets like Oregon, Colorado, and Drake. I had them going at least one round and at most to the Sweet Sixteen.
Overall, have fun with it. Don’t do math, don’t analyze, just enjoy the process and sit on your couch and yell at the TV for the rest of three weeks.
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