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NCAA March Madness Bracketology: what are your odds of getting a perfect bracket?

Posted at 11:52 PM, Mar 13, 2018
and last updated 2018-03-13 23:52:19-04

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – It’s March and the Madness is beginning. People everywhere are getting those brackets ready for Thursday’s start of the NCAA basketball tournament. The tournament has 64 teams that dwindle down to a champion.

If you’re looking to fill out a perfect bracket, you could be waiting for a very long time. That’s virtually impossible but there are a lot of interesting ways you can fill out a winning bracket.

“Definitely have to pick a couple upsets,” says Evan Gravedoni, a freshman at GVSU. “There’s always a 14 seed making it all the way to the elite 8 or the sweet 16 or something like that. Definitely got to pick your upsets.”

The higher seeds are predicted to win, but upsets always happen which makes predicting the tournament especially difficult.

“When I pick whoever is going into the brackets it’s on hot streaks for wins. Even the 11 seeds I got a lot of 11’s," says Kyle Smietanski, a freshman at GVSU.

A winning bracket usually has higher seeds advancing to the final four, and it’s next to impossible to pick a perfect bracket.

“Well if you’re in a bracket and you want to win you have to take some chances. You just can’t go with the obvious ones. You’re going to be like everybody else. So you have to look in and try to find one or two at least that can pull the upset,” says GVSU Statistics Professor, Paul Stephenson.

And sometimes you have to take some chances.

“Well if you’re in a bracket and you want to win you have to take some chances,” says Ric Wesley, GVSU head basketball coach. “You just can’t go with the obvious ones. You’re going to be like everybody else. So you have to look in and try to find one or two at least that can pull the upset.”

Some people will pick their teams based on the school colors or even the mascots. So there is no exact science to doing it.

The tournament starts Thursday.