This year for March Madness, instead of picking which mascot would beat which or whose jersey is cooler, James Holzhauer has a better idea.
During the March Madness NCAA tournament, we all try to find ways to nullify the, well, madness. Statistically speaking, correctly predicting the fourteenth seed upsetting a three seed seems near impossible. As a result, many folks turn to alternate statistics to try and luck their way into the right picks. This year, James Holzhauer came up with another innovative way to pick the winners in the tournament.
“Conferences whose names correctly count their number of teams are 8-0,” James Holzhauer points out in his Tweet. “Those that don’t are 13-13 with a forfeit.”
While this statistic seems like a dumb superstition, you kind of have to follow the trends to take the Madness out of March. The stat seems irrelevant, however, the numbers never lie. Coming from James Holzhauer, who has won millions on Jeopardy! and almost as much on sports betting, that advice holds a bit more weight than anyone. Listen or don’t, but based on how your bracket probably looks right now, you could use all of the advice you can get.
March Madness is as Mad as it has Ever Been
This year, March has had more Madness than almost any other NCAA Tournament in recent memory. Perhaps it just feels that way since we haven’t experienced it for almost two full years. Either way, one cannot deny how wildly unpredictable this tournament has turned out so far.
For instance, in the first round alone, one fifteen seed, one fourteen seed, two thirteen seeds, one twelve seed, and two eleven seeds all defeated their top-ranked opponents. Even for March Madness, that’s a whole lot of upsets.
The second round of the March Madness Tournament has also proven deadly to high-ranked teams. For example, 8th-seeded Loyola Chicago upended first-seeded Illinois in one of the first games of the second round. Beyond that, fifteen seed Oral Roberts moved on again, knocking off seventh seed Florida. Twelfth-seeded Oregon State continued their hot streak by beating Oklahoma State and advancing.
As of now, only three of four one-seeds, two of the four two-seeds, two of the four three-seeds, and one of the four four-seeds remain in the tournament. In the Midwest section of the March Madness bracket, only the number two seed remains of the top seven teams. That just goes to show, you are just as good picking based on some stupid B.S. like how many teams a conference has as you would be using logic.
