March Madness brackets often have multiple goals in mind. Everybody wants to get lots of picks right, but the bragging rights that come along with nailing a huge upset pick are tantalizing indeed.
After all, if you pick that 15-seed to upset a 2, and get it right, your legendary show of boldness will be the talk of your bracket pool for years to come.
How Many First Round Upset Picks Should You Make?
There’s really no golden rule to how many first round upsets your should pick; it depends a lot on factors like the scoring system of your pool. Most bracket pickers go too crazy picking upsets, though, especially in the Round of 64. As a result, they actually hurt their overall chances of winning their pool.
If you use our 2015 NCAA bracket picks to optimize your bracket picks this year, you’ll get a huge leg up on those opponents.
But still — sometimes it’s just plain fun to spice up your bracket with a bunch of bold calls, even if it may not be the wisest thing to do. For this post, we’re going to look at teams seeded 11 or higher, and figure out which are the smartest risks of the bunch.
5 Intriguing First Round NCAA Tournament Upset Picks
The five picks below may or may not make you more likely to win your pool, but they are exciting options that have a good chance of happening. They are also good value picks that the public is underestimating.
(Subscribers to our 2015 bracket picks can examine these picks further by looking at our unique Data Grid feature, as well as our round by round Survival Odds.
#14 Georgia St. over #3 Baylor
If you want to take some calculated risks, don’t be too turned off by a really bad seed number; these upsets can and do happen. (In four of the past five tournaments, for instance, a team seeded 14 or higher has won a game in the Round of 64.) Like any 14 seed, Georgia State is outmatched in talent by their opponent, Baylor. However, the Panthers are led by two elite scorers who could get hot at the right time. We see the Panthers as the most likely of all the 14-16 seeds to pull off an upset, and give them about a 22% (roughly 1-in-5) chance.
#12 Buffalo over #5 West Virginia
12-5 upsets get a lot of discussion before each tournament, and it’s often deserved. This year looks like an exception, though. None of the 12 seeds look particularly strong, and we project there’s a 29% chance (almost 1-in-3) that all four 5 seeds win their first round game this year. But if you feel compelled to pick one, Bobby Hurley’s Buffalo squad has the best chance. We give Buffalo a 34% chance to win (roughly 1-in-3).
#13 Valparaiso over #4 Maryland
Over the last ten years, 13 seeds have won their first round games over 4 seeds a total of nine times, an average of almost one per year. That doesn’t mean it will happen again, but it’s certainly not a farfetched possibility. Landing a 4 seed implies that Maryland is one of the 16 top teams in the nation — but they’re not even close. Our predictive ratings rank the Terrapins at #27, and Ken Pomeroy has them way down at #33, the worst of all the 4 seeds. Valparaiso’s odds of pulling the upset are nearly equal to Buffalo’s, at 32% or about 1-in-3.
#11 UCLA over #6 SMU
With 13 losses UCLA just barely squeaked into the NCAA tournament with an at-large bid. Now that they’re in, though, the Bruins’ strength of schedule and major conference pedigree may work to their advantage. We think this UCLA team gives coach Steve Alford an excellent chance to turn the tables on his history of getting upset in the early rounds. And that checkered past may be all the more reason to pick UCLA; our objective odds give them a 45% chance to upset SMU, almost a coin flip. Yet only 32% of the public is picking the Bruins.
#11 Texas over #6 Butler
Texas is the only team seeded 11 or higher that is actually favored to win their first round game by our bracket odds, which are based on the world’s best power ratings systems plus Vegas data. The Longhorns were a top 10 team in preseason rankings, indicative of their deep talent, but suffered through some tough losses during the 2014-15 season. In fact, our objective Luck Rankings, which evaluate whether teams are playing better or worse than their current win-loss record indicates, ranks the Longhorns one of the unluckiest teams in NCAA basketball this year; several of their close losses could have easily gone the other way. If that luck changes now, watch out. We give Texas a 54% chance to win their first game, so it’s still close to a coin flip. But if they do upset Butler, they have the talent to go even further in the bracket.
Based on the sum of the probabilities, we expect around two of the five upsets listed above to happen in this year’s NCAA tournament. Here are the ones we’d pick for your bracket.
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