NCAA Tournament Guide For Filling Out Your Brackets (2023)

NCAA college basketball expert Seth Finkelstein's guide on how to fill out your NCAA Tournament brackets. March Madness advice for the 2023 NCAA Tournament.

What's up RotoBallers! March Madness is officially here, and RotoBaller will be bringing you a full breakdown of the NCAA tournament. After you're done here, be sure to check out the rest of our NCAA tournament columns and advice, including tournament winners/picks, sleepers, busts, and breakdowns of each region.

I'm here to give you a tournament strategy guide - important things to know before filling out your brackets. Now, everyone's a genius this time of year. I love listening to people rave about a team like Oral Roberts. Everyone thinks they know so much despite not watching more than a dozen games all year and only reading one article on ESPN.

The NCAA Tournament will be played all throughout the country with the Final Four being in Houston. I also have columns breaking down each region (West, East, South, and Midwest).

A Checklist Before Filling Out Your Bracket

1. Check the spreads, not the seeds. Here are some examples of games where the spreads are a lot closer than you'd think based on the seeds: 

• No. 10 Utah State is a 2.5-point favorite against No. 7 Missouri
• No. 10 Boise State is a 2.0-point favorite against No. 7 Northwestern

So while those may look like upsets based on seeds, they will not actually be an upset. Another spread catching my eye is No. 5 Miami -2.5 against No. 12 Drake. The Missouri Valley is a weak conference and Miami won the ACC regular season title which makes me wonder why this line is this low.

2. Go contrarian. Last year, Iowa was the hottest team after winning the Big Ten Tournament. They lost in the first round to Richmond.

3. Teams are entirely different come March than they were in December. Weigh recent games more than a game in December.

4. Check the rules for your pool. Are there upset points? Are first-round games weighted as evenly as Elite Eight games? Pools have their own rules, make sure you know them.

5. Where are these games being played? Proximity from campus to the location is huge.

6. And finally, the most important rule: DO NOT TINKER! The more you second-guess yourself, the more you'll regret it.

Does Conference Tournament Success Equal NCAA Tournament Success?

The answer is no.

Fivethirtyeight.com posed this question several years ago. They looked at data dating back to 1985. It's complicated, and if you really care to find out the process and how they came to their conclusion, you can read it here. Here is the main point of their findings:

"This analysis does serve as a warning against putting too much emphasis on the conference tournament relative to a team’s entire body of work, especially when it comes to picking unexpectedly hot conference tournament teams to go further than you’d otherwise predict for teams with their résumés."

Look at Iowa or Arizona last year. Both teams won their conference tournament and Iowa was knocked out in the first round while Zona was eliminated in the Sweet 16. Could Marquette be this year's hot team that many fall in love with only to not make it out of the first round?

Conference tournaments are just another cash grab for the schools, but surely a ton of fun to watch.

What's the Magic Formula For Winning It All?

1. A veteran team. Look at the last five champions: Kansas, Baylor, Virginia, Villanova, and North Carolina. Those teams had upper-classmen who had been in plenty of big games before and knew how to get it done in the big moments.

2. An NBA point guard.

3. A rim protector.

4. A team with a solid offense, but more importantly, one that can get stops when it needs to.

5. Ken Pomeroy is a college basketball wizard. He has advanced stats for every team on his website, kenpom.com. Since 2002, each team to win the title except for one was ranked in the top 20 in both offensive and defensive efficiency. Those teams this year are Alabama, Houston, UCONN, and Texas. UCLA, Purdue, and Kansas are just on the outside looking in.

NCAA Tournament Championship Pick

The Houston Cougars are the most experienced team and have been the best all season. They only lost three games; Alabama in December, a one-point loss to Temple in January and then this past Sunday to Memphis in the AAC Tournament Finals. But that came a week after Houston just beat Memphis and they were without Marcus Sasser.

They are led by upperclassmen with a starting five consisting of a senior, three juniors, and a freshman. Sasser and Jamal Shead played in a Final Four two years ago, and last year went to the Elite Eight, narrowly losing to Villanova. Ken Pom has them as the number one overall team with the 11th-ranked offense and 4th-ranked defense. The Cougars allow the second-fewest points per game at 56.5.

The Final Four is in Houston so what a fitting way for the Cougars to win the National Championship.

Enjoy the games, and good luck to all!

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