Posted on Tuesday 18 March 2008
Looking for a little guidance while filling out your bracket? John Paulsen offers up a series of trend stats, including Sagarin ratings and points-per-shot, that should help you with all of the tough decisions. Now all you need to do is come up with your excuse for missing work Thursday and Friday.
Also, congradulations to John and his wife on the birth of their first child, son Max!
Keys to winning your bracket pools:
1) Don’t listen to this idiot. He has virtually no upsets the entire tournament. If you want to build an average or above average bracket follow this guy’s rules. But if you want to win a pool of 50 people you have to take risks and predict some outcomes that most people aren’t predicting. The #1 and #2 seeds will not all reach the elite eight. The #1 seeds have NEVER all reached the Final Four. If you follow this tool’s rules a team like George Mason from a few years ago will crush you. Pick something a little unlikely but not too crazy like Purdue getting to the elite eight over Xavier and Duke, or Wisconsin making a final four run. However, I would only stick to high caliber teams winning the championship. Pick a 1 or 2 seed to win the whole thing.
Call me crazy, but I get the impression Jeff won’t be taking Sagarin’s advice for filling out his bracket this year…
I personally think you have to take more risks, too, although I get the idea of keeping everything conservative so you can have more teams at the end. Either way!