Bracket Contest Returns, New Prize Up for Grabs

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Next Thursday marks the traditional start of this year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament, which produces a lot of associated betting opportunities, many of which come in the way of bracket contests between friends, or in offices and bars. The tournament will technically start next Tuesday and Wednesday night with the “First Four” games in Dayton, Ohio, but most consider Thursday the official start of the tournament.

Filling out a college basketball tournament bracket has become something of a tradition— even some U.S. Presidents have done it --and between now and next week, you’ll see lots of articles on how to fill out your bracket to best effect. You’ll read that only one No. 16 seed has ever beaten a No. 1 (No. 16 UMBC’s shocking upset of No. 1 Virginia back in 2018) and that 12 vs. 5 matchups are prime spots to search for upsets. But that being said, there’s one strategy that almost no one writes about. If you’re gambling on your bracket, it’s the most important consideration of all.

The best thing you can do is guess, as there’s a reason there is never a perfect bracket every single year. A total of 70 million tournament brackets were filled out nationwide in 2017. In case you were wondering, the odds of filling out a perfect bracket are 1 in 9,200,000,000,000,000,000 (9,2 quintillion). It would be easier to win back-to-back lotteries, buying one ticket each time, than it is to fill out a perfect bracket. Now that your morale and confidence have probably been crushed, the Watonga Republican is proud to announce our seventh annual Big Bracket Bonanza.

Coming off the heels of our popular football contest, we have decided to tweak our College Basketball Bracket contest from last year to give in more ways than one. This year we will not only give away prizes to our winners but for the seventh straight year, we will be doing a little bit of good with the contest. A donation will be made to a worthy cause thanks to the sponsors of our contest. This year’s recipient will be announced at a later date.

With 68 teams playing 67 games in a span of 21 days, that’s a whole lot of chaos in a short amount of time, with only one team left standing at the end.

Now, I want to preface this by saying, that because of our press deadline, and the start of the tournament, everyone is going to have a short amount of time to fill out a bracket and turn it in to us at the office before the tournament starts. We won’t have the official Big Bracket Bonanza bracket in the paper until the March 18 edition of the Watonga Republican, because the tournament field isn’t set until 6 p.m. this upcoming Sunday. Unfortunately, there isn’t much that we here at the paper could do about that.

Brackets must be filled out and returned to the Watonga Republican by 10:55 a.m., Wednesday, March 18. or postmarked by Tuesday, March 17.

If a bracket is turned in after those times, it will still be accepted. However, all games that have begun or have been completed prior to that time... will NOT count towards your final score.

If you are an out-of-state subscriber to the paper, you can compete in the contest by faxing your bracket into us, provided your name on the bracket matches a subscription to the paper. Faxed brackets will be accepted until 10:55 a.m. on Thursday, March 19.

Here is a quick rundown of the Big Bracket Bonanza’s rules:

• Brackets must be filled out and returned to the Watonga Republican by 10:55 a.m., Wednesday, March 18 or postmarked by Tuesday, March 17.

• If a bracket is turned in after that... all first-round picks of games that have been played that day will be ineligible. No brackets will be accepted for any reason after 5 p.m. on Friday, March 20.

• NO PHOTO COPIED BRACKETS WILL BE ACCEPTED

• Faxed Brackets will be accepted provided that the entrant’s name corresponds to a subscriber of the paper.

Scoring will be as follows:

• 1st Round - 1 point per correct

• 2nd Round - 2 points per correct prediction

• Sweet 16 - 4 points per correct prediction

• Elite 8 - 8 points per correct prediction

• Finals - 16 points per correct prediction

• Champion - 32 points per correct prediction

• In the case of a tiebreaker, the tiebreaker will be the combined score of the Championship Game.

• Scores will be compiled after the championship game held Monday, April 6.

• Results will be published in the 15 issue.

• This is a winner-take-all contest for the Grand Prize of $50 and a 1-year subscription to the Watonga Republican newspaper.

lips and Strategies based on Historical Results:

One of the main keys to winning your bracket pool is picking the right upset, picking the winner based on previous seed results is tough to do. However, there are some patterns that start to emerge when you look at the historical data.

For example, despite a higher ranking, No. 8 seeds lose more often than not against No. 9 seeds.

The following percentages are based on 28 years tournament play with four of the same types of matchups in each tournament.

The No. 1 seed has won 99% of the time against the No. 16 seed.

The No. 2 seed has won 96% of the time against the No. 15 seed.

The No. 3 seed has won 85% of the time against the No. 14 seed.

The No. 4 seed has won 79% of the time against the No. 13 seed.

The No. 5 seed has won 67% of the time against the No. 12 seed.

The No. 6 seed has won 67% of the time against the No. 11 seed.

The No. 7 seed has won 60% of the time against the No. 10 seed.

The No. 8 seed has won 47% of the time against the No. 9 seed.

Andrew Salmi can be reached at Sports@WatongaRepublican.com