Everyone wants to win the March Madness prize pool. But it’s important to remember that college basketball will look different in 2026. It makes sense to choose high probability events in your grouping.
There is no shortage of analytical resources on the market, such as the ubiquitous Ken Pomeroy. In my site, The Power Rank, the higher-ranked teams have won 70.9% of their last 23 games.
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Even with all the resources available now, it’s critical to have the right strategy when filling out brackets based on the size of the pool. Sometimes, reverse thinking is the right choice. Let me explain.
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Use chalk in smaller pools
To explain the two different strategies you might use, let’s use the 2019 NCAA Tournament as an example.
Duke dominated the 2019 college basketball landscape. Mike Krzyzewski’s team features Zion Williamson and RJ Barrett, both players who will be selected with the top three picks in the next NBA draft.
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Duke’s results heading into the game also have them ranked No. 1 in my power rankings of college basketball teams. With the simple method of picking the higher-ranked team in each game, you have Duke as the 2019 champion.
I call this my favorite strategy in my book How To Win Your NCAA Tournament Pool, and it will get you the most desirable points. According to my data, Duke has a 34% chance of winning the tournament, the best of any team. This is the best strategy for small pools.
However, there is another strategy you can use to increase your chances of winning a medium-sized pool.
How to trade against the trend in a larger pool
To see this, let’s assume you are in a pool of 50 people. According to Yahoo Sports Bracket Mayhem’s Open Draft Distribution tab, which contains data on millions of brackets, 30 percent of brackets selected Duke as the winner. That means about 15 people in your pool chose Duke.
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If Duke wins, you and 15 other people will get 32 ​​points because you chose the championship, which is the most important choice on your team. With so many people competing, chances are one of them will make some shocking choices and beat you in the first few rounds.
Instead, you want to make a reverse pick and go against the Duke favorite. You find a team with a high probability of winning, but no one else in your pool picked that team.
In 2019, Virginia bucked the trend. Tony Bennett’s team featured future pros De’Andre Hunter and Ty Jerome. However, they were in the shadow of ACC rival Duke, losing both games to them in the regular season.
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According to the data, only 8% chose Virginia as the winner. One factor was Virginia’s loss to No. 16 seed UMBC in the first round of the 2018 NCAA Tournament, the first No. 1 seed to lose to a No. 16 seed in men’s tournament history.
My college basketball numbers give Virginia a 22% chance of winning the NCAA Tournament. Note the huge difference between Virginia’s winning odds and the 8% bracket chosen by people in the pool.
Think back to the 50-person pool. Only four people would choose Virginia as the champion. If Virginia wins, you and four others have the rightful title. The solid chalk choices you make in the early rounds should be enough to secure victory.
This contrarian strategy worked in 2019, as Virginia won the NCAA Tournament.
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Two important points about contrarian strategies
Let’s discuss two key issues with popular strategies versus contrarian strategies.
First, contrarian strategies work best when there is a large gap between a team’s probability of winning and the score of the team that selected them as champion. In 2019, Virginia’s gap was about 14%. Based on the simulation results, I estimate that contrarian strategies are starting to beat the favorite strategies in pools of 20 or more people.
[Bracket Mayhem 101: How to use experts picks to fill out your bracket]
If the gap is small, your winning probabilities using the popular strategy and the contrarian strategy are comparable for pool sizes up to 100. Regardless of the gap, I recommend submitting multiple brackets using both strategies.
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Secondly, you can also look beyond the data that people use to pick championship teams. Common sense also works.
For example, let’s say you’re in a swimming pool in Ann Arbor in 2026. It’s a safe bet that based on how the Wolverines perform this season, a large portion of the population will pick Michigan State as the winner. The same idea applies to teams with alumni from championship contenders like Duke and Arizona.
Mining Pool Strategy for 2026
The 2026 NCAA Tournament will be an especially interesting year to apply favorite and contrarian strategies.
Looking at the BetMGM futures market, Michigan and Duke are the favorites to win this year’s tournament. I project these teams to have the highest draft percentage as champions, which you can check on Yahoo when you fill out the brackets.
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The top teams in college basketball are having a great season. In my team rankings based on winning percentage and adjusted for schedule strength, Arizona State, Michigan State and Duke all score 23 points better than the Division I average. That’s close to what Florida scored entering the tournament last season, but well above the 20 points scored by top teams in previous years.
[Best bets on every NCAA tournament game]
Additionally, Duke and Michigan are similar in that both will be missing key point guards for the game. Caleb Foster spent three seasons in the Duke program and finally earned the starting job this season. He underwent surgery on a broken foot and will almost certainly miss all of the game.
LJ Carson didn’t start for Michigan, but he could easily be the top point guard ahead of Elliott Cardo. Carson tore his ACL against Illinois and will miss the remainder of the season.
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One team with contrarian value might be Arizona State, even as a No. 1 seed. The Wildcats didn’t enter the season with championship expectations, ranking 13th in the preseason AP poll. However, the Wildcats perform well on both ends of the floor and actually rank ahead of Michigan State and Duke in my college basketball rankings.
edvon run Strength rankingan analytics website dedicated to sports betting.
