Are you disastrous at dribbling? Have your hands never touched a basketball before? Do you only dunk cookies in milk? Even if you are short on experience with basketball, March Madness is an enjoyable event for anyone who is competitive or likes watching sports. The odds of having a perfect bracket are extremely slim for everyone- only 1 in 9.2 quintillion- so, the most important thing is to fill out all of the blanks to get as many points as possible. Hopefully with these strategies you will become the lucky winner of the Bracket Challenge!

1. Intuition Use your intuition to decide who will advance from each round! It is unlikely you have in depth knowledge of each teach, so you will often have to resort to menial methods of deciding which team will win, whether it be the college’s location, name, etc.
2. Cool name One of the quickest and most easy way to form your bracket is to advance the team with the more interesting name! Maybe this strategy will pay off, as perennially high ranked teams include Villanova and Gonzaga.
3. Does it have a u in its name? Eight of the winning teams since 2000 have had a u in their names.
4. Not in Colorado Ditch your state pride! In the 78 years of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship, Colorado has only appeared in the finals twice, and has not made it that far since 1955.
5. In the East The last nine national champions have been schools hailing from the eastern half of the U.S.
6. North Carolina For three consecutive years, one of the teams in the championship game have come from North Carolina.
7. Did they win last year? Maybe history repeating itself will apply in the realm of March Madness this year! The last five tournaments have been won by North Carolina, Villanova, Duke, Connecticut, and Louisville.
8. Barack Obama If you need insight on your bracket, check out the bracket former president Barack Obama releases every year, he picked the correct winner of the tournament last year!
9. Upsets DON’T LISTEN TO THE ODDS, but listen to them. March Madness is “mad” for a reason: There were more than ten instances last year when a lower ranked team beat a higher ranked one, but, that being said, both of the teams in the championship game last year were seeded #1.