March Madness is one of the most exciting sports events in the United States. It is a college basketball tournament run by the NCAA where 68 teams compete to become national champions. The tournament happens every year in March and early April. It is very intense since it is single elimination, and if a team loses one game, then they are out.
A big part of March Madness is making a bracket. A bracket is a prediction of who will win each game all the way to the championship. Every year, millions of people fill out brackets hoping to be the one with a perfect bracket. According to the NCAA, the odds of having a perfect bracket are 1 in 9.2 quintillion, which is the same as winning the lottery twice in a row. So, unless you are the luckiest person alive, it is practically impossible to have a perfect bracket.
Given this, the tournament is unpredictable. Ben Berer ‘28 said, “I think it’s so hard to predict because any team can win on any day. Even if a team is better, one bad game and they’re out, so it is very hard to predict every outcome.”
Above is my bracket. I tried to pick teams based on the team’s skill and how they perform under pressure. Once in a while, I would choose a team I am not so confident is going to win to try to predict the upset. My predictions did not go so well; I was only 56.6% accurate. I had the Florida Gators winning the tournament, but they got eliminated very early, causing a lot of my future picks to be incorrect. On the other hand, I looked at Ben Berer’s bracket, and he did very well:
He had different picks than me, and because he did not pick Florida to win, he is bound to have a way better bracket than me. Some of his guesses may have been lucky, but it shows that you don’t only need to have knowledge about the game, but also have luck on your side.
People love March Madness because it is fun, competitive, and very unpredictable. As Carmelo Anthony, a former NBA star and college champion, said, “It’s less predictable now… Now you don’t know who is going to be there.”
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