NCAA tournament bracket tips: Advice to help make your picks

Yahoo Sports’ Jason Fitz provides tips for you to fill out your brackets in a wide open field this season. You can get in on the action with Yahoo’s Bracket Madness game for both the men’s and the women’s tournaments. It’s free to play so head to Yahoo.com/tourney to sign up.

Video Transcript

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JASON FITZ: It's time for some tips and tricks to earn you tourney treasure and help you win your bracket. Now, I know you were told there would be no math, but I'm at least gonna have to give you some numbers. Let's start by talking upsets.

Now, on the women's side, more often than not, you can go chalk. The top seeds advanced. But on the men's side, I'm gonna give you a number that's staggering. 8 and 1/2-- that's the average number of upsets in the first round every single year.

But the record number? 14. Oh, and by the way, we've hit that number in 2021 and in 2022. That, to me, looks like a trend. And in a year that feels like it's unprecedented with parity across college basketball, pick your upsets early.

That's important. Because by the time you get into the Elite Eight and the Final Four, there's barely any upsets. We're talking about the most we've ever seen in the Elite Eight and Final Four is 2 in each round. When you start talking about that, it tells you, get those upsets in early.

Now, what's an upset? Well, we all talk about 12 over 5. Everybody loves that. What if I told you there was one seed that was even bigger? In fact, historically, 11 over 6, that's an upset that has hit 58 times. We're talking about 38% of the brackets.

Now, 34% of the time, we see 12 over 5. So it's still good. But look for 11 over 6 this year, especially, again, in a year where we're gonna see all sorts of crazy seeding. Why not start to stack some of those 11 over 6 and 12 over 5's?

Also, a 7 or a 10 has beaten a 2 in the second round 46 times in the last 38 tournaments. That's 1.2 per year. So that tells us you should probably pick a 2 to go down in round two.

Most importantly, this year, if there's ever been a year to go with your gut, it's this one. While we're sitting here trying to argue about who can actually win the championship this year, it's a reminder that, in a year that's wild, this is the year to fill out as many brackets as you can and to get as crazy with all of them because Connecticut could repeat. Houston could do the unthinkable. Or finally, a big man like Purdue could win a championship.

There are so many variables. The math tells you to pick the upsets. But most importantly, we tell you, have a good time.

Be sure to get in on the action with Yahoo's Bracket Madness game for both the men's and women's tournaments. You could win $25,000 in our best bracket contest. It's free to play, so head to yahoo.com/tourney to sign up.

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