NCAA Archives - Practically Predictable

My March Madness First Round Upset Picks

We’ve been looking at NCAA first round upsets in the prior two posts (see here and here). Now that we know the result of the play-in games, it’s time to make some decisions.

Here are the upset picks I made after a lot of discussions with my sons.

Lower Seed to beat	Higher Seed
(13) Buffalo	(4) Arizona
(12) South Dakota St.	(5) Ohio St.
(11) Loyola Chicago	(6) Miami (Fla.)
(11) Syracuse	(6) TCU
(10) Butler	(7) Arkansas
(9) North Carolina St.	(8) Seton Hall
(9) Florida St.	(8) Missouri

As we’ve discussed in the prior posts, the 8-9 games should never really be considered upsets.

I don’t think many of these upset picks are very controversial, perhaps with the exception of Buffalo over Arizona. It was hard to pick 3 and 4 seeds to fall in the first round this year. For me, Buffalo over Arizona is ultimately a gut call even factoring in DeAndre Ayton. My sons don’t agree with me on this one.

Let’s the Big Dance begin. Good luck with your picks.

Ken Pomeroy Ratings and First Round Upset Picks

This post continues where our previous post on NCAA first round upsets left off. We will look at Ken Pomeroy’s KenPom college basketball ratings and see how they can help us predict wins and losses. By combining the KenPom data with the NCAA tournament game history from our previous post, we’ll see whether the KenPom data would have helped predict first round upsets in previous NCAA tournaments.
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March Madness First Round Upsets

March Madness is almost upon us! Are you ready to fill out your brackets?

It’s hard for your bracket to do well if your picks lose in the first round. Although some approaches to bracket selection start with the Final Four and work backwards, we’ll start with the first round. How many upsets should you pick in the first round to maximize your chance of success? Read on to find out!
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