Sean Powers ’15
It’s the best time of year again, yes that’s right it’s March Madness time. I’m sure many of you college basketball fans have already filled out your brackets, but for those of you who haven’t yet here are some other ways to think about picking your national champion. Oddly enough if you pick a 16 seed to win it all, then predicting NCAA tournament probably is not your thing. In fact a 16 seed has never made it out of the round of 64, so the odds of a team like Cal Poly (13-19) winning 6 games in a row (7 if you include their play in game) are slim to none. Even if you aren’t in touch with the latest college basketball news, here are some statistics that may help sway your picking.

• Since 1939, only 3 states have had 10 or more national championships in the NCAA tournament era (California has 15, North Carolina 11, Kentucky 10). So the chances of a champion coming from one of these three states are high. In fact 4 out of the last 5 years, a champion has come from either Kentucky or North Carolina.
• If picking by state is not your thing then you could pick by mascot. If you root for a Wildcat, chances are high your team could win a championship. The problem is there is more than one team with the Wildcat as there mascot, but none the less a Wildcat has won it all 10 times. The only mascot to beat that out is none other than the Bruin which has 11 all of which have come from UCLA.
• The first letter of a team’s nickname that has the most championships begins with the letter B (you can thank UCLA and Duke). Finally if you were picking games solely on color then there’s a good chance you might want to pick a team with the color blue.

I know many of you won’t use any of these methods in picking your bracket but hey maybe one of you will and when you win money for your perfect bracket you’ll know who to thank.