My family loves filling out brackets for March Madness, and I love spreadsheets. I’m going to share with you my two favorite spreadsheets for this time of year.
#1 – NCAA Bracket-inator
Besides Dakota Wesleyan, I don’t watch college basketball all that closely. When I make picks, nostalgia and personal bias influences my picks. Even is I was knowledgeable and unbiased, how do you account for the Cinderella stories?
I account for them by just looking at the straight statistics. About 7% of the time, the 15 Seed beats the 2 Seed. The 8 Seed beats the 9 Seed 51% of the time. All these stats have been accumulated by McCubed so that all I have to do is plug them into a spreadsheet and run a random number generator. Et voila!
Bonus: If my bracket does horrible, I blame the random number generator. If my bracket does well, I take credit for creating the spreadsheet.
#2 – NCAA Bracket Scoring
This spreadsheet works for a small pool (less than 10 people). This one uses two different scoring systems which might doubles my odds of winning? You need to be fairly good at data entry to use this one.
Scoring System 1: This is a traditional method where you get 1 point for correct guesses for Round 1, 2 points for correct guesses in Round 2, and so forth. This system usually rewards those that play it safe with their picks.
Scoring System 2: The alternate scoring system gives you points based on seeding. 15 points for correctly picking the 15 Seed to win. This is then multiplied by Round so if you correctly guess the 15 Seed to win in Round 2, you get 30 points. If you correctly guess the 2 Seed to win in Round 2, you get 4 points. This system rewards the lucky risk taker.
I linked both spreadsheets below and offer a quick overview in the video. Enjoy!
Useful Links
- NCAA Bracket-inator: https://jctaccounting.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/ncaa-bracket-inator.xlsx
- Bracket Scoring: https://jctaccounting.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/ncaa-bracket.xlsx
- McCubed Seed Statistics: http://mcubed.net/ncaab/seeds.shtml
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