Have fun with your March Madness bracket

It's that time of year again, when everyone and their grandmother fills out a March Madness bracket and watches college basketball games they otherwise would have no interest in. The majority of people use the same rules of thumb to predict the winners, but is that the best way to do it?

The casual fan doesn't want to fill out their bracket randomly, but they won't spend all day on it either. Therefore they rely on a recognition heuristic to choose the winners. Teams like Duke, Kansas and Kentucky are elite basketball programs that most people are familiar with - and for good reason. This can be a very safe way to pick winners. Others use seeding as a key indicator; reasoning the higher seed should probably win. These methods are the quickest and easiest way to accurately determine winners.

So while everyone else picks based on what they believe is the most relevant information, other methods may stand the best chance at winning. Because the majority of people in your pool used a nearly identical strategy, most of their brackets will be busted if one of the favorites is upset. So why not be creative?

Let a different kind of one-reason decision making guide your selections. It doesn't have to be the most relevant information; but it will be so much more enjoyable if it works in your favor. One of my brackets is based on teams which are better at offensive rebounding. You could do it on anything; say, free throw shooting, the schools you'd most like to visit, or whichever team comes first in alphabetical order (if Baylor and Brigham Young meet in the Championship Game, you'll probably be the only one who picked it, and you'll be glad you did!).

Another simple strategy is choosing the Championship Game match-up first then working your way out. Since the last rounds of the tournament are where bracket pools are won and lost, worry less about picking long shots and work on nailing down the final two teams. The four #1 seeds have the best odds at winning the championship, so why not put them in your Final Four right away and work your way out?

As a cheat sheet, you can go ahead and fill in those teams you feel most strongly about, then sprinkle in some upsets like these on the fringes.

Midwest Region

• #11 San Diego St. over #6 Tennessee
• Either #10 Georgia Tech or #7 Oklahoma State over #2 Ohio State: I've taken GT and OK St. equally as many times in my 10 brackets (translation: 5 GT, 5 OK St.) and have taken either over OSU half the time before losing to Georgetown

West Region

• #13 Murray State over #4 Vanderbilt in the first round, then past #5 Butler to advance to the Sweet 16
• #10 Florida over #7 BYU
• #3 Pittsburgh over #2 Kansas St. (in 40% of my brackets) and over Syracuse (30%)

East Region

• #5 Temple over #4 Wisconsin (in 50% of my brackets)
• #11 Washington (30% of my brackets) over #6 Marquette, either beating #3 New Mexico (80%). The disparity in these picks are fine because any of them should lose to West Virginia in the Sweet 16
• #10 Missouri over #7 Clemson (70% of my brackets)
• #2 West Virginia over #1 Kentucky (50%)

South Region

• #9 Louisville over #8 California
• #13 Siena over #4 Purdue
• #10 St. Mary's over #7 Richmond (40% of my brackets)
• #3 Baylor over #2 Villanova in the Sweet 16 (60%)
• #3 Baylor over #1 Duke (40%)

However this tournament plays out, it'll be fun to watch. Honestly, I haven't really engaged in the March Madness mayhem too much in the past few years (I didn't bet in an actual pool last year and this is the first time I've filled out multiple brackets). I'll follow up with how they play out.