March Madness Picks: Best NCAA Tournament Bets From Every Seed Line
By Matt Snyder
What computers predict about March Madness: Here are some best bet upset picks for the 2017 NCAA Tournament.
The best part about March Madness is filling out your bracket. No one else cares about your picks, but few things feel better than correctly picking an upset winner. Lehigh over Duke? Yep, had that one.
But you don’t get that same feeling if you simply pick every underdog to advance. You have to win your bracket pool as well (don’t have a group to join? Join ours!). The best thing to do is make discerning choices when selecting underdogs.
This is where computer ranking systems can come into play. Don’t worry about manually pouring into all the details yourself. Forget about road wins against Top 25 teams or free throw percentage or field goal percent defense. The computers bake all that goodness in.
I like to keep things simple. I like to take the Ken Pomeroy ratings, Massey ratings, and FiveThirtyEight forecasts and combine them into a consensus pick database. That gives me a projected win-loss percentage for each matchup (and each subsequent round).
There’s still plenty of luck involved. Teams with an 80% chance to win (perhaps a strong No. 5 vs. No. 12 matchup) will lose one time in every five. You can make a solid pick and miss it. That’s the tournament!
Here are the best bet picks from every seed line for the 2017 NCAA Tournament.