Mt. Pleasant, IA- It’s a numbers game and the only one that truly counts will be the higher score at the end of the National Championship game on April 7th at the Alamodome in San Antonio. However, that’s two weeks away and 66 games away.
So, taking the consolation prize will be the numbers behind KILJ’s 2025 Bracket Challenge for the men’s tournament with the first number being 46 submitted brackets, 12 more than last year.
The most impressive number was a surprisingly diminutive value. It became evident through the first 20-something brackets that everyone was over upsets as no one picked a #14-seed or higher to advance past their first-round matchup, despite #14 Oakland executing the upset a year ago.
That was until one brave bracket selected three #14-seeds and a #15-seed to knock down the door and pull off the upset. That did not break down the door to more brazen brackets.
Last year, the people averaged 6.5 first round upsets with the actual product revealing 11 upsets with the aforementioned Oakland possessing the highest seed and three #9-seeds advancing.
This year, the people had their numbers dwindle down to an average of 5.2 upsets per bracket, but the #9-seed was picked to win 40% of the time, the most common “upset.” Baylor and Creighton really carry the load for that statistic.
Which brings us to the most common upset, #9 Baylor and #11 Drake—the home state pride was strong—were picked to pull off the upset 28 times or 61%–is it hardly considered an upset at that point? Other common choices included: Creighton (23 times or 50%), North Carolina (21 times or 46%), and New Mexico (18 times or 40%).
The North Carolina choice is an interesting one, considering the ire the Tar Heels drew for even getting a chance in the First Four slate of action. They silenced the doubters in a rout of San Diego State and many thought that same type of domination would continue.
In terms of bold choices, one bracket picked 14 upsets with four other brackets picking upsets in the double figures. The mode of the brackets was six upsets as nine people followed that route.
The #12-seeds UC San Diego and Colorado State led the way for higher seeds in terms of upsets as each were picked 12 times, followed by #13 Yale 10 times. Keeping with home state pride, only one #14-seed was never picked to pull off the upset and that was Lipscombe over Iowa State, so the Cyclones have some added pressure.
The furthest advancing upset goes to #11 Drake. The Bulldogs were picked to make their second Final Four appearance in program history, but, unlike last year, no one had them win the title.
Every #12-seed was picked to attend the Sweet 16 but no farther and the hottest take of the bunch had #16 Norfolk State take down the SEC-champ #1 Florida as the only bracket to have a #1-seed lose in the first round.
#13 Yale and #11 North Carolina was picked to go to the Elite 8, #7 Kansas finished as the runner-up, and #6 Illinois was the highest seed picked to win the championship. 1988 Kansas is the only #6-seed to ever win the National Championship.
That segue leads us right to the Final Four and the Championship race. The top experts in bracketology saw the top eight teams are the strongest selections that the tournament might have ever seen. Most people took that and ran with it, the top two-seeds were selected to make the Final Four 154 times out of a possible 184 choices or 84%.
Florida and Duke led the race with 31 Final Four appearances apiece.
The Southeast Conference, who holds the most members in the bracket, made up 40% of the Final Four selections.
The usual choice for a championship match went to Florida versus Duke with 12 brackets picking that, followed by Florida versus Houston, which was picked eight times. In third place was Michigan State taking on Duke five times.
Surprisingly, Auburn the overall #1-seed, despite flailing at the end of the season, was picked to attend the championship matchup just seven times, taking the title three times.
The battle will be between Florida and Duke as the Gators were picked to reign as the champion 14 times with the Blue Devils getting back to form 11 times. Houston was a distant third with seven championship selections.
The Gators won an impressive 61% of the time in the finals amongst our brackets with Duke taking the title 48% of the time. Overall, there were 17 unique choices for the championship game.
So, that concludes another year of breaking down the (useless but interesting) numbers of KILJ’s Bracket Challenge. Best of luck to everyone this year and again I will leave you with one last number: the odds of filling out a perfect bracket are 1 in 9.2 quintillion to round down.