The ACC, Big East, Big 10, Big 12, Pac 10, and the SEC all have one thing in common when it comes to Final Four. What is it? Well Since 1997 these conferences make up 95% of the teams that were in the Final Four.

Over that same period of time the average total of seeds in the final four is 11. Total up your final four selections and your total should be around the number 11. Each year 1.7 number one seeds advance to the final four. A number 2 or number 3 seed will win the tournament 30-40% of time, based on historical trends.

How many possible Bracket selections are there?
There are 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 possible brackets with 65 teams included. The number is slightly lower with 64 teams 9,223,372,036,775,808. Now we can see why picking a perfect bracket is 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 1.

Round One, Bracket Upsets.
It’s just not going to happen here in this first round. At least the odds aren’t favorable for there being a March Madness Upset in the first round.

Matchups #1 vs. #16 and #2 vs. #15
Go ahead and move your #1 seeds to the next round. There has never been a 16 seed that has won since the bracket moved to 64 teams since 1985. The 15 seeds are just 4-80 since 1985 which means you are pretty safe putting the #2 seeds through.

Matchups: #3 vs. #14 and #4 vs. #13
Moving on past predictable #1 and #2 seeds, you now have two possible directions in which to move. One way to go is to pick a few Bracket upsets with the best chance of picking an underdog and hope they make a run. Here you need to decide whether you’re going to selectively pick your upsets or if you’re going to pick all the possible upsets. Personally I believe that it is best to have a few teams in mind and not to go over-board on upsets. As long as it doesn’t conflict with your Final Four predictions, I recommend you fill in the #3 and #4 seeds to win their games. The reason for this is that the #1, #2, #3 and #4 seeds have won about 90% of the time since 1985. There is a good chance one of these teams will lose in the first round but since that is so difficult to predict, the odds are in your favor to have them all move on after the first round. Now that you have moved all these teams through to the next round your total possible bracket numbers have been reduced to 140,737,425,855,328. Still pretty high, but your inching closer to that highly touted title of Office Pool champion or Bracket Buster Guru.

Matchups: #5 vs. #12, #6 vs. #11, #7 vs. #10 and #8 vs. #9
Here is where you make your money in March Madness brackets.

These matchups are difficult for the Bracket makers, many of these teams fill jilted for being Number 12 seeds. The most Bracket upsets come within these matchups and here’s where your bracket is made or broken. The #5 vs. #12 has historically proved to bust many brackets.
The #5 seeds have gone just 11-9 vs. the #12 seeds in the past 5 years of the bracket. These numbers show that a #12 seed should be moving on (at least one).
The 7-10 and 8-9 match ups appear to be toss ups. Since 1985, #7 seeds have won about 60% of the time and #8 seeds have won about 45% of the time. That being said, it will take more than just picking a “higher seed” to overcome Joe public selecting their bracket winners. Check out theFBZ March Madness Resources for tools to help you decide on which upset to select.

Moving on to the Second Round
Are you excited about your bracket yet? In the second round, the rate of straight-up wins by underdogs is 5% higher than in the tournament as a whole. Sunday is our day gamblers, underdogs in this round, as the lower seeds have been 27-29 SU! The obstacle has been faced by the #2 seeds squaring off with a #10 seed. In this spot, #2 seeds have gone just 5-9. But, when a #2 faces a #7, they are 9-4. If you have a match-up of a #2 vs. #10 in this round, you may want to give strong consideration to the lower seed. The underdogs emerge from the #10, #11 and #12 seeds in this round. These teams after winning their first round games have been 41-44 in this round to advance to the sweet 16. Now those are numbers that can help you win your bracket this year.

Let’s move on to the Sweet 16.
Be careful here when selecting your Sweet 16 picks, remember it is rare to see all #1 seeds reach the Elite Eight. It has happened in only two tournaments. These matchups are historically broken down into 25% #1 vs. #2 seeds and close to 20% are #1 vs. #3 seeds. Only about 10% of all tournaments have seen both teams in these matchups that are both #4 seeds or lower. Roughly 66% of #1 seeds reach the Elite Eight and about three-eighths of #2 seeds reach the Elite Eight. The history shows that about 67% of the Elite Eight teams are #1, #2, or #3 seeds. Consider having one match-up of #1 vs. #2, and likely another #1 vs. #3. You should also think about having four or five teams seeded in the #1-#3 range advancing to the Elite eight.

Now that you have made it this far, congratulations your almost a winner. The Bracket upsets start decreasing now and the tournament actually gets pretty predictable. This round has seen 27 underdogs of #4 seeding or higher. Only 15% of them have won. Be safe and stick to the higher seeds here in this round.

Good Luck this year with your Brackets and if you’re looking for more information on March Madness, Bracket Contest, Selecting Winners or Free March Madness Service plays then check out theFBZ March Madness Bracket Central. theFBZ is where the winning starts this March Madness.

Find your Bracket upsets here

Have you ever wondered what the odds of picking a perfect bracket are?

Well I hope you didn’t have your hopes set on that perfect bracket this year – because the odds of that are not very good. It is figured that the odds of picking a perfect bracket are 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 1. That’s nine quintillion to one!

How big of a number is that? It is a billion times as big as 9 billion! That’s still not as big as Dick Vitale’s mouth, and almost as big as BlueMyBoy’s ex-girlfriend.

Seriously though think of it this way: if every person, including children, on the planet randomly filled out 10 million brackets each, the odds would be LESS than 1% that even one would have a perfect bracket for March Madness. How tall would every possible bracket be, on paper of normal thickness? That stack would reach from the earth’s surface to the sun over six thousand times! That stack would be 19.5 million times the height of Mount Everest!

Want to increase your odds this year? Then search the internet for resources, stay away from popular march madness picks. Scour theFBZ Forum and find out what some of the experts are saying about this years NCAA Tournament.
For more information about NCAA, Basketball Picks, Bracket Contest and March Madness then look at theFBZ March Madness Bracket Central.

March Madness Bracket Central, all your Bracket Handicapping needs found in one place

Find a Free March Madness Contest here

NCCA Betting Tips

March Madness betting for most gamblers is all about statistics, trends and matchups. One thing that gets ingored by most gamblers is a Public Trend that looks at the March Madness brackets – and that is coaching. Coaches are of extremely important when gamblers look at March Madness betting lines.

March Madness betting lines can be influenced by coaches. This means that sometimes �big name� coaches, like �big name� teams, can deplete the value on the March Madness betting board. Roy Williams of North Carolina, even before finally getting his first national championship, was highly regarded going back to his days at Kansas. Williams now has the status of being perhaps the number one �big name� coach in America and he coaches college basketball�s �big name� team in North Carolina. This should immediately tell gamblers that North Carolina will rarely have value in March Madness betting. North Carolina will win games, but covering March Madness betting pointspreads will be more difficult.

Duke�s Mike Krzyzewski is another �name brand� coach of a �name brand� program; Duke. Duke is North Carolina�s archrival and another team that offers little value in March Madness betting. Once you get past those two coaches there is another group that is well respected but doesn�t have the following of the public. Jim Calhoun of Connecticut continually does an excellent job but his teams are rarely overpriced in March Madness betting. Connecticut just doesn�t hold the same appeal for gamblers that Duke or North Carolina does in the March Madness brackets. Ben Howland of UCLA is in a similar, yet different situation. UCLA is a marquee team on the West Coast and attracts a large following of gamblers in March Madness betting. Bill Self of Kansas is in a similar situation. He is not known as a marquee coach, but he coaches a team in Kansas that has a large public following in March Madness betting.

As you look at the March Madness brackets don�t ignore the coaches. The March Madness brackets will be full of big name coaches like Krzyzewski and Williams but other up and coming coaches like Matt Painter of Purdue and Tony Bennett of Washington State will be worth watching.

For more information on Betting March Madness, Betting tips for the NCAA Tourney, Tourney Stats, trends and predictions take a look at theFBZ`s March Madness Bracket Central. Here you will find all you need to be a winner this 2008 March Madness.