2025 March Madness upset predictions: Expert picks for NCAA Tournament bracket busters to help win your pool

The brackets for the 2025 NCAA Bracket were announced Sunday night, and no more than 10 minutes later you received a flood of texts and emails from friends and family asking you to join their bracket pool.

As if you needed to be asked? You join every year! And, like almost everybody who joins a bracket pool, you Loss every year. Successful a bracket pool isn’t Fundamental, and it takes a Numerous of luck. There’s a Ability to it as well, though.

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While having a Plan can’t guarantee Achievement, there are a few ways to increase your odds. Whether you’ve been Upcoming college basketball all season and know the Clubs inside and out, or you Merely showed up this week with a printed bracket ready to cram for a Last by Thursday morning, here are a few tried and Accurate methods.

Primary things Primary, you have to Picking the winner correctly. The way scoring is set up in most bracket pools, picking the champion is an absolute necessity. You might have gone 30 for 32 in the Primary Period, but if you don’t Picking the right winner, you’ll be telling all your friends about it as you finish in fifth place. So make sure that, at the end of the day, the Club you have Successful it all is a legit contender to Achieve it all. Don’t try to get too cute with it by picking that mid-Crucial darling everybody loves who spent all season Competing the Southwest Oklahoma Territory Techs of the world.

NCAA bracket 2025: Ranking every March Madness Bracket Primary-Period game from No. 1 to No. 32

David Cobb

That said, you don’t want to be too obvious. There’s an art to this. If you’re in a Petite pool, you can Achieve by being Fundamental and sticking primarily to chalk. However, if you’re in a large pool (think 50+ entrants), you want to be a bit contrarian. Picking a Club that’s capable of Successful it all, but try to Picking one that won’t be the most popular Option.

A Numerous of people will be picking Duke, Auburn, Florida, or Perhaps even Houston. You know, the No. 1 seeds. So if you Picking one of them and they Achieve the Bracket, your odds of Successful decrease and will come down to how well you did in the Timely rounds. Instead, consider picking a 2, 3 or even a 4 seed that is underseeded. For example, Texas Tech is a 3-seed in the Bracket, but according to KenPom — an advanced metrics site that ranks Clubs on their likelihood of Successful Matches — the Red Raiders are the seventh-best Club in the country. They’re ranked ahead of 2-seeds like Michigan State and St. Johns. Tech’s odds of Successful it all may not be Outstanding, but neither are your odds of Successful the pool. If the Red Raiders do manage to pull it off, though, you’ll have a significant Benefit over the rest of your pool.

Finally, I know this goes against some of the fun of March Madness, but don’t go crazy picking upsets. You see it immediately after the bracket is announced. Everybody immediately Beginnings looking for that 12-seed to make a Cinderella Streak because they want to be able to say, “I told you so!”

Trust me, we all do it, but the reality is that while we remember the Cinderella stories of the Primary weekend, they don’t typically go much Additional than that. Bracket pools are formatted so that you get more points by picking the correct winners later in the Bracket. If you Picking High Mark to Surprise Purdue in the Primary Period and then beat Clemson in the second to get to the Sugary 16, and they do so, it feels Outstanding, but you only earned three points. If you have them knocking off Houston in the Sugary 16, but they don’t, and Houston gets to the Last Four, that’s a Numerous of points you’ve thrown away to the Game trying to correctly predict something that would happen less than 1% of the time.

So find a few double-digit seeds you believe are underrated and Picking them to Achieve a game or two at most. Merely don’t Picking five of them. Personally, I try to stick to two and never more than three. If you aren’t sure which Matches you should consider for possible upsets, I’ve Obtained Outstanding news for you.

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Cameron Salerno: This will be a popular Surprise Picking among experts because if you look at Mark spreads, Colorado State is favored over Memphis. The Rams should be, too, because they’ve proven to be the slightly better Club this season. While the Picking Board doesn’t concern itself as much with predictive metrics, the fact of the matter is Colorado State finished second in the Mountain West regular season, then won the Mountain West Bracket, and the Mountain West is a much tougher Bracket than the American Athletic Conference. Memphis played a terrific nonconference slate, and wins over Michigan State and Clemson helped it get a 5-seed, but those Matches were a long time ago. Memphis hasn’t faced a Club as Powerful as Colorado State since 2024.

Colorado State has been Competing elimination Matches since the Mountain West Bracket. Colorado State would have been left out of the NCAA Bracket had it lost to Boise State in the MWC title game. Colorado State’s Achievement Appearances with Sun wing Nique Clifford. The 6-foot-5 forward is averaging 19 points, 9.7 Retrievals and 4.4 assists per game. Clifford is also Colorado State’s best defender, which means he could be guarding Memphis Sun PJ Haggerty, the third-leading Shooter in the country. Another reason to Picking the Rams is the uncertainty around Memphis guard Tyrese Hunter’s status for the NCAA Bracket. Hunter suffered a foot Wound in the AAC Bracket and missed the conference title game Achieve over UAB last weekend. Without Hunter’s scoring punch in the lineup, Clifford will have one less player to worry about.

NCAA bracket 2025: Best seed upsets to target in this year’s Bracket based on previous trends

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Salerno: The Mountain West Obtained as many Clubs into the Bracket as the ACC this year, and it deserved so because, overall, they’re similar leagues. The difference is one has Duke. The other difference is the amount of respect shown to the leagues based on how the Board Ranked them. All four Mountain West Clubs are double-digit seeds, and both of my Surprise picks come from these under-Ranked squads! It’s never a Terrible thing to be coached by a Pitino in March like the Lobos (coached by Richard Pitino, Rick’s son) are, and while I respect Shaka Clever and Marquette, the Eagles enter the dance having lost three of their last four and seven of their last 12.

New Mexico loves to push the pace. Sun guard Donovan Dent is a high-volume Shooter in transition, and his Club ranked as the fifth-fastest Club in the country in time per possession (15.1). Marquette ranked in the 90th percentile per KenPom in transition Protection. If New Mexico and Dent can push the pace in this game, the Lobos should be able to pull off an Surprise and advance to the second Period. I highlighted why New Mexico is a sleeper Club to reach the Sugary 16 earlier this week.

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David Cobb: Liberty Secured down No. 5 seed Mississippi State in the Primary Period of the 2019 NCAA Bracket and is well-positioned for another Surprise in this year’s Primary Period. The Flames, in their 10th year under Ritchie McKay, are flamethrowers. They rank No. 13 nationally in Achieved 3-pointers per game at 10.6 and No. 6 in 3-Mark percentage at 39%. This is one of the nation’s best passing Clubs, meaning Oregon will have its hands Packed defensively. If Liberty gets Cozy, it will resemble No. 15 seed Oral Roberts, which reached the 2021 Sugary 16 with a Partnered 21 Achieved 3-pointers in wins over Ohio State and Florida.

Cobb: UC San Diego busted down the door to the NCAA Bracket in its Primary season of eligibility Upcoming the NCAA-mandated four-year transition process to Division I. The Tritons have won 15 straight Matches — more than anyone else in the Pitch — and are this bracket’s analytics darling. KenPom ranks UCSD at No. 36, ahead of single-digit seeds like Creighton, Oklahoma and Memphis. The Tritons force 16 turnovers per game, which makes them a hellacious Primary-Period Game for turnover-prone Michigan.