NCAA Tournament Teams You Should Favor Given the Public's Picks

Winning your office pool takes some luck. But you can increase your chances of winning with a little math, too.

The biggest flaw bracket-filler-outers have when making tournament selections is not analyzing what their competition is doing. They're (you're) just picking the optimal bracket without factoring in what others in the pool may be choosing.

For instance, let's assume you're in a pool with 100 people. You pick Villanova to repeat as National Champion, but so do 85 others. If Villanova wins then, sure, you'll be fine. But we all know the chance of Villanova winning the title isn't 85%. That would be ridiculous.

You may be thinking, "JJ, it's impossible to know who people are picking, so why does this even matter?" Well, friend, ESPN allows the impossible to be possible with their Who Picked Whom data, which is free for public use.

And by comparing those odds to what our algorithm says, we can find inefficiencies to help increase your chances of choosing a winning bracket.

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