Now that we’ve discussed some strategies for filling out your NCAA bracket early round games we’ll move on to the later rounds.  Depending on the format of pool/contest you’re dealing with this may be given greater weight in determining the winner.  For that reason, you might want to start by picking your ‘Final Four’ and working back.  In any case, here are some historical data concepts to help make your decisions:

–Don’t put all four #1 seeds through to the Final Four: This has only happened once since the tournament was expanded to 64 teams in 1985.

–Don’t put together a Final Four without any #1 seeds: Conversley, don’t put together a Final Four without *any* #1 seeds.  This has also happened only once since 1985.

–Don’t get too crazy with lower seeded teams making it to the Final Four: Statistically, the Final Four is most often made up of #1 through #4 seeds.  Since 1985 there’s only been 10 teams seeded 5th or lower to make the Final Four.  Of these, only two were seeded lower than 8th (surprisingly, both of these were #11 seeds most recently George Mason in 2006).

–Championship game participants typically have previous Final Four experience: The last time the NCCA Championship Game featured two teams that had never been to the ‘Final Four’?  Try 1945.

–National Champions are usually #1 or #2 seeds: After all of the talk of  ‘Cinderella’ teams and several weeks of games, the National Championship usually is won by–surprise–a top seeded team.  Since 1985, 14 #1 seeds have won the NCAA title.  #2 seeds have won 4 times, #3 seeds three times and #4 seeds once.  In other words, 22 of the 24 tournaments since the field was expanded have been won by top four seeds with a #1 seed winning just over 58% of the time.  Only two teams ranked lower than #4 have ever won the tournament, with none seeded lower than #8.

One final tip–make sure the team you’ve picked to win the Championship has won six straight games at some point in the regular season.  That’s what they’ll have to do to take the NCAA title.