2021 NCAA Tournament: 10 tips for filling out a winning bracket, including why fading Gonzaga makes sense

The 2021 NCAA Tournament will be unlike any other in history because the entire Big Dance will be held in the greater Indianapolis area and coronavirus will almost surely play a role on at least a few teams. For example, ACC champion Georgia Tech reported a positive case on Tuesday, but that doesn't mean it is a player. Powerhouses Virginia and Kansas had to pull out of the ACC Tournament and Big 12 Tournament, respectively, last week due to positive COVID-19 tests but they will play in the Big Dance ... just not at full strength initially. This is the first NCAA Tournament without blue-bloods Duke and Kentucky since 1976.

There have been some schedule changes this year as the First Four all takes place Thursday, while the first weekend games take place Friday-Monday as opposed to Thursday-Sunday. The Sweet 16 is March 27-28, the Elite Eight from March 29-30, the Final Four on April 3 and the national title game April 5. All games from the Elite Eight through the tournament's completion will be held at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indy.    

The Wahoos are technically defending tournament champions as they won the most recent bracket in 2019 for the first men's basketball title in school history. However, it is unbeaten and No. 1 overall seed Gonzaga that is the +200 national championship favorite this year at William Hill Sportsbook.

Before you fill out your bracket, there are several historical trends you have to consider, and we're sharing 10 of those tips below. That the Zags are seeded first overall does not bode well for their chances (Tip No. 6). In addition, that Gonzaga doesn't have a loss historically means it's likely to come up short. The last unbeaten national champion was Indiana in the 1975-76 season. Four previous schools since entered the Big Dance without a loss and just one reached the title game: Larry Bird and Indiana State in 1979 when the Sycamores lost to Magic Johnson and Michigan State.

Get every pick, every play, every upset and fill out your bracket with our help! Join SportsLine now to see which teams will make and break your bracket, and see who cuts down the nets, all from the model that beat nearly 90 percent of brackets last tournament, one year after finishing in the top 5 percent!

A typical NCAA Tournament bracket doubles the points in each round for a correct pick: One point for each game in Round 1 (32 possible points due to 32 games), two points in the Round of 32 (16 games), four points in the Sweet 16 (eight), eight in the Elite Eight (four), 16 in the Final Four (two) and 32 (one) for getting the correct national champion.

The bracket winner simply accumulates the most total points. The maximum correct score in that format is 192 (32 per round). Usually, it takes correctly predicting the national champion to win a bracket but not always – especially not if the champion is a longer shot. This year, so many people are picking Gonzaga that it might be smart to not choose the Zags.

There is no sure way to win a March Madness bracket contest -- why does it always seem like Jane the secretary with zero sports knowledge wins by picking the "meaner mascot" in each game? -- but here are some useful tips.

Regional breakdowns: West | South | Midwest | East

Top 10 NCAA Tournament tips

1. It's fun picking big upsets in the first or second round, but for the most part the favorites are going to be the teams reaching the Final Four. The lowest-seeded team to ever reach the national semifinals is a No. 11. No team seeded worse than eighth has ever won it all.

2. On the flip side, it's not wise to go completely "chalk" and pick all No. 1 seeds to reach the Final Four. Since the field expanded to 64, that has happened just once: in 2008. No top seeds reaching the national semifinals has happened twice, last in 2011. The highest percentage has been a single No. 1 seed making the Final Four (42.9 percent, or 15 occasions). But two or more No. 1 seeds have made the Final Four in 18 NCAA tournaments (51.4 percent).

3. Stay away from No. 5 seeds ... and non-power conference schools to win it all. Of the top eight seeds in an NCAA Tournament, the only one yet to win it all is a No. 5. Part of this could be due to the fact that at least one No. 12 upsets a No. 5 almost every year in the first round. There have been 47 of those upsets since 1985. Only five times have all four No. 5s gotten past the first round. In addition, no team from outside of a power conference -- we are counting UConn as a power conference school because it is back in the Big East but did win a title while in the AAC, and the Big East is a power conference in basketball but not football -- has won since UNLV in 1990. Just like in college football, only the "haves" win the NCAA Tournament. That means schools like Gonzaga, Houston and San Diego State could be out of luck in 2021.  

4. Pay attention to conference tournaments. Rather amazingly, no school has ever won a national championship after losing its first game in the conference tournament -- even if that first game came after a double-bye. This year, West Virginia (3) and Purdue (4) are the only top-four seeds that lost their first conference tournament game.

5. Preseason rankings also matter. Since 1985, there have been 54 occasions where a school was unranked in the preseason Associated Press Top 25 but entered the NCAA Tournament ranked in the Top 10 and with no worse than a third seed. Only three times has a team in that scenario reached the Final Four. Texas Tech in 2019 was one. The lone national champion was Connecticut in 2011. Twenty-four of the 54 teams lost in either the first or second round.

6. Being seeded No. 1 overall is not a great thing. In 2004, the Selection Committee started assigning a No. 1 overall seed to a school. That team has reached the Final Four seven of 16 times and won it all only three times – and also failed to get out of the first weekend four times. Virginia was the No. 1 overall seed in 2018 when it became the first top seed to lose to a No. 16 in the first round.

7. No team has repeated as the national champion since Florida in 2007. Only seven defending champs have returned to the Final Four since seeding began, and in fact no defending champ has gotten past the Sweet 16 since the '07 Gators. Virginia is technically the defending champion as noted above with the 2020 tournament canceled.

8. Just four times has a team that lost in the first round one tournament and then won the national championship the next: Indiana (1987), UCLA (1995), Duke (2015) and Virginia (2019).

9. Don't expect first-time national championship participants. In 2019, Texas Tech and Virginia were the first two first-time participants since the Magic Johnson-Larry Bird game.

10. Pick early upsets wisely. Since 1985, there have been an average of 12.2 "upsets" in each NCAA Tournament. An upset is defined as when a lower-seeded team at least two seeds worse than its opponent wins the game. So, a No. 9 beating a No. 8 is not an "upset." A No. 10 over a No. 8 would be regardless of point spread. The least amount of upsets using that criteria has been four in 2007. The most was 19 in 2014. By this criterion, the most frequent upset has been a No. 10 over a No. 7 in Round 1 (55 times) and a No. 6 over a No. 3 in Round 2 (28 times).

Get every pick, every play, every upset and fill out your bracket with our help! Join SportsLine now to see which teams will make and break your bracket, and see who cuts down the nets, all from the model that nailed 15 of the 26 double-digit upsets the last four tournaments! 

NCAA Tournament history

The first-ever men's basketball NCAA Tournament was held in 1939 and had just eight schools competing for a national championship. It wasn't even run by the NCAA, but instead the National Association of Coaches. The NCAA took over the next year.

However, it wasn't until the 1979 Big Dance that the tournament started on the road to the national popularity it holds today. On March 26, 1979, in Salt Lake City, Magic Johnson's Michigan State Spartans beat Larry Bird's unbeaten Indiana State Sycamores for the national title in a game that remains the highest-rated NCAA basketball telecast ever. And, of course, spawned one of the great individual sports rivalries in American history.

Interest exploded after that -- to the point the NCAA Tournament is the most-wagered event in the United States every year, even more so than the Super Bowl (when the tournament is taken as a whole).

The tournament has been broadcast by CBS since 1982, which was also the first year that the Selection Show was broadcast on TV. That first national championship matchup carried by CBS on March 29, 1982, was one of the most memorable games overall in NCAA history when a fairly unknown North Carolina freshman named Michael Jordan hit the game-winning jumper with 17 seconds left to beat Georgetown 62-61 in the Superdome in New Orleans. The Hoyas still had plenty of time left after Jordan's shot, but guard Fred Brown mistook UNC's James Worthy for a teammate and threw a pass right to Worthy. It was one of the most infamous plays in college basketball annals.

In 1985, the NCAA expanded the tournament field to 64 teams and that's when the office pools and filling out brackets took off. It is thought that north of 65 million Americans of all ages fill out at least bracket each year in whichever form. The odds of getting every game right is one in 9.2 quintillion, but sometimes it's gratifying enough simply to beat your family members, friends and/or co-workers.

The field expanded to 68 teams in 2011, but most brackets exclude the First Four games because of the quick turnaround from Selection Sunday to the First Four.

The SportsLine Projection Model has simulated every 2021 NCAA Tournament game 10,000 times and revealed its point-spread selections and over-under picks for every single first-round contest, including Thursday's play-in games. SportsLine members can always get the latest picks and analysis for every game on the college basketball picksheet.