Everyone has their secrets to filling out their NCAA Tournament brackets. Whether you balance out your upsets with favorites, choose your favorite mascots, or pick the prettiest team colors. Here are some tips that have done me well over the years.

1) Fill in your first bracket based on your gut. I go through each region and take a quick look at the match ups and fill them out based on a gut reaction to each game. If you are an avid fan or a casual observer you have a basic feeling about how certain teams will do. This way you don’t spend a ton of time agonizing over the 8-9 match up that is basically a coin toss anyway. You can go back over your selections, but usually, after I dissect it a little, bit I tend to go with my gut reaction.

2) Try to remember that picking a winner isn’t a science. Sure there are favorites and a ton of stats that you can compute to try to wring out the most out of each selection. But come on, is it any wonder the secretary wins your office pool every couple of years picking teams her ex-husband hates?

3) NEVER PICK YOUR ALMA-MATER TO WIN IT ALL. The tournament is no time for your heart to select winners. Inevitably your team is going to get knocked out and probably by the likes of George Mason, Oral Roberts or Austin Peay, and you will be left holding a tattered bracket and a broken heart to boot.

4) Never listen to Digger, Dicky V, your favorite radio talk show host, your friend who knows a guy, or anyone else who claims to be an expert. The so called experts know just as much as Joe Blow sports fan who knows anything about the game. The tournament is a different animal than the regular season and anything can happen. Any team can get hot and make a run and conversely any team can lose their composure and fall out in the first round. Sure a 16 has never beaten a 1 but look at the how many 12’s have beaten 5’s - since 1989 there have only been two years where it hasn’t happened! So go with what you know and try to keep the ESPN noise to a minimum.

5) Entering 2 pools is OK. Entering 10 and hedging your bets with 10 different winners doesn’t make you an expert bracketologist (whatever that is Mr. Lunardi). Anyone can enter a boatload of pools and eventually pick a winner. Half the fun is seeing how well you can do picking the field.

Good luck and have fun!

{This article is also posted at Nosebleedradio}