March Madness is upon us once again and for many this is the best sporting event of the year. Even for those who don’t care much about college basketball or even have not paid any attention during the season, there is a likelihood that you will be filling out a bracket. First and foremost, this is freaking hard. Even the people who have watched and studied the game more the most struggle to get things right and in fact there doesn’t seem to be a strong correlation at all between those who have paid attention or not. But with that being said, I do believe that are some rules to follow when filling out a bracket that can help give you even the smallest of edges. Below, I will take a look at some different categories of teams and the profiles of teams that historically have won the title, been knocked out early or have been the teams to upset multiple higher seeds and made deep runs. This is an inexact science to say the least and history doesn’t always repeat itself. There has been no better poster child for parity than this 2023 season with few, if any, really dominant teams. This is as wide open a tournament that you will ever see so anything is possible! But to help you along the way, feel free to follow or completely ignore some of the historical trends below. Your choice, I am just here to lay them out. Note: I will be posting my bracket for smaller pools (<50-100 people) and larger pools (100+) by Wednesday afternoon at the latest.

2023 Tournament Team Stats

data c/o hoop-math.com and kenpom.com

The analysis above is based on adjusted efficiency metrics but if we just look at the raw points per possession numbers for teams entering the tourney, with no adjustment at all for schedules, we get essentially an “unbiased” look at successful teams. Only one team (2014 Uconn) won the title with a raw offensive rank worse than 45th. The 2011 Uconn team is the only title team to win with a raw defensive rank worse than 51st. So even if you think that some teams get improper adjustment solely based on the competition they’ve faced, the raw data helps further filter the contenders.

To keep it fairly simple, I am using a filter for the teams that rank in the Kenpom top 25 overall, are top 50 in adjusted offense (top 85 in raw pts/poss) and top 50 in adjusted defense (top 75 raw def pts/poss). Some of the teams below are much less likely to win based on historical parameters but it’s important to understand that this isn’t perfect and this season could be the year where the mold is broken with extreme parity.

Not a ton of surprises here at the top of the list. Among the top 6 (likeliest of the likely), Purdue looks the most flimsy with their 54th ranked raw defensive stats. That would be the 2nd worst defensive team to win a title in the last 20+ years. You will notice Gonzaga (171st raw defense) and Kansas (109th in raw offense) are the two exclusions from the Kenpom top 10 due to those outlier metrics. If you consider that the 2011 and 2014 Uconn teams were very much outliers, the list above would be narrowed to Houston, Alabama and Uconn at the top of the most likely Champion list. I don’t believe you should be so rigid with all of these parameters, but these are the teams I will likely look to the most in my brackets.

The Empty Suits

Who are the top seeds that could be primed for a big upset early? There is a very specific profile for teams that I like to call The Empty Suits. It’s been true and tested year after year in the tournament that teams that don’t play consistently good defense, find it very difficult to string together multiple tournament wins in a row for a deep run. However, because we are looking for higher seeded teams (7 seed or better) that may fit the upset bill, they must have also been really good on offense in order to receive a high seed. Those are the types of teams we want to fade from making a deep tournament run.

So just going back to 2011, there have been 21 teams that have been a top 7 seed with a top 25 raw offensive efficiency (points per possession) but with a raw defensive efficiency ranking of 135 or worse. Among these 21 teams, 0 made the Final 4, only 3 made the Elite 8 and eight teams (!) were upset by a double digit seed in round one. Only one of the 10 teams that meet the Empty Suits category since 2017 have made it past round two. Last season, three such teams (Iowa, Purdue and Ohio State) met this criteria. Iowa lost in round one to 12th seeded Richmond while OSU lost to Villanova in round two. Purdue in the Sweet 16 lost to 15th seed St. Peters to thwart any sort of run by them as well.  I would really hesitate placing any of these teams in your Final 4 and feel free to look strongly at picking against these teams early in your bracket if you are trying to differentiate yourself in your bracket. Teams that meet this criteria this season include Gonzaga, Xavier, Baylor and Miami (FL).

Double Digit Cinderella

Every year the biggest question is who can be this year’s Cinderella? They come in all shapes and sizes but I will do my best to try and profile what historically has proven to be the characteristics that can match some teams this season. For point of reference, there have been 15 teams seeded 11 or higher to make the Sweet 16 since 2014 and at least one has made it in every year. And eight of the last 11 teams seeded 11 or higher to make the Sweet 16 have come from one of the big conference schools. Now let’s remember that this is a small sample of teams and there is lots of variance needed to win in an upset. Sometimes it’s as simple as a team getting hot from 3 or the opponent going ice cold, etc.

But a few things do stand out. For one, the median adjusted tempo that these teams played with ranked 232nd in the country. Six of the 15 teams that have pulled multiple upsets, had a tempo that ranked over 300th in the country. Of those six teams, five came from a Power 5 conference. So look for one of the big conference teams that play ultra slow as a potential sweet 16 upset candidate. Otherwise, the two teams that played the fastest tempo (2021 Oral Roberts and 2015 UCLA) also were excellent 3-point shooting teams. Oral ranked 17th and UCLA 71st in 3pt percentage so they could get away with a lot of possessions since they made a lot of 3s. But in general, a big chunk of these 11+ seeded teams that reached the Sweet 16 in recent memory, played at an extremely slow pace. And that makes sense since in order to increase your odds of beating a better, more talented team, you want to minimize the variance buy decreasing the number of possessions as much as possible. Just think about it, do you have a better chance at beating Steph Curry in a 3 point contest where first to miss loses or first to 20? The less opportunity for the favorite the better odds at something random occurring that helps the underdog. Two of the recent 11+ seeded upset teams that came from non Power 5- Loyola in 2018 and Saint Peter’s last season, were extremely slow and both were elite defensively, ranking 6th (Loyola) and 12th (Saint Peter’s) in raw defensive efficiency.

The other thing that really helps is taking advantage of what your opponent is weak at defending. If the higher seeded team lets you have extra chances to score (opponent offensive rebounding) or doesn’t take away chances for you to score (bad turnover rate on defense) then that will help the underdog. So finding a good combo of a double digit seed who keeps things slow, can make some threes but also plays an opponent who doesn’t minimize your chances to score, is ideal for an upset or two. Here are some candidates:

Other Tourney Notes

• The non 16 seed play in game has existed for the last 11 seasons. In 10 of those tournaments, at least one has advanced to the round of 32. UCLA in 2021 and VCU in 2011 made it all the way to the Final 4 and three others reached the sweet 16. Miss St, ASU, Nevada and Pitt are those play in teams this season. Don’t be afraid to advance one of these teams.

• History says to fade the Mountain West. No MW team has won a tournament game since 2018 and the conference as a whole is just 3-11 ATS snce 2016. There has never been a MW team to get to the Elite 8.

• A top 4 seed has lost in the opening round in 13 of the last 14 tournaments

• In 14 straight tournaments, a team seeded 10 or higher has made it to the Sweet 16

• No team has ever won a title after losing in their first conference tournament game. In 2019, Texas Tech was close, losing in the title game to Virginia. K State and Baylor fit the bill this season.

Comparing betting odds to win the title versus what the general public is picking can also help find good value. Using the table below to find teams that are undervalued from a championship standpoint in brackets is useful for large pools.