They say creating the perfect March Madness bracket is impossible. Well, creating the perfect March Madness bracket was impossible!
The FlurrySports Podcast has made a habit out of predicting sports outcomes in unlikely ways. Now, my co-host and I are hunting for the perfect bracket! In this article and video below, we will share 10 unique strategies to fill out your NCAA Tournament bracket. One of these has to work, right?
How to Fill Out a March Madness Bracket
Filling out a March Madness bracket is easy, and it makes watching the NCAA Tournament much more fun. However, the hard part is filling out a bracket that actually performs well.
CLICK HERE to get a printable March Madness bracket! In my opinion, it is the most fun to actually print you and fill out a bracket, highlighting the winners as you go. Of course, you can sign up for free bracket challenges on Sleeper, ESPN, and other places.
If you want to join the free FlurrySports Podcast bracket challenge to see how the below brackets do, you can click this link.
What Are the Odds of a Perfect Bracket?
While it really feels like we may have nailed a perfect March Madness bracket strategy below, there is no doubt that this task is nearly impossible. Some nerds crunched the numbers, and the odds of you filling out a perfect bracket are one in 9.2 quintillion. You may as well go buy some lottery tickets.
New Ways to Fill Out a March Madness Bracket
It Takes A Village
They say “It takes a village to raise a child.” Well, nobody has created a perfect NCAA Tournament bracket on their own yet, and it may take a village to do so. In this bracket, Jake called upon four other people to make selections on his bracket.
This helps to take away any specific patterns or biases you may have. Of course, you may be putting the fate of your bracket in the hands of an idiot as well.
Winner: Florida
I’m Lovin’ It
Is McDonald’s a sponsor of this March Madness? I am unsure, but it does feel like they could financially back the NCAA and rig the tournament in their favor somehow. I love a good conspiracy theory, especially if it doesn’t make perfect sense.
In this bracket strategy, I spent too much time looking up the address for every school’s basketball arena. Well, the 64 teams that were already in the tournament. Afterward, I searched for the closest McDonald’s, and the school with the closer golden arches was deemed the winner.
Aside from possibly the perfect March Madness bracket, here are some interesting facts:
- 27-of-64 schools have a McDonald’s within one mile of their basketball arena.
- 47-of-64 schools have a McDonald’s within two miles of their basketball arena.
- UConn is the furthest away (6.6 miles), suggesting maybe my strategy is completely backward.
- All four 1-Seeds have a McDonald’s within a mile.
- Purdue damn near has the Golden Arches in their arena (0.3 miles away).
Winner: Purdue
Coin Flip
Making college basketball picks is often seen as a coin flip. In this case, it was! Jake flipped a coin for every single matchup, with heads meaning the higher seen won the game. Tails, of course, meant the underdog pulled off the upset.
Winner: St. John’s
Next Man Up
A team only has five players on the floor at a time. It can be relatively easy to take away the opponent’s best player. The issue is that there are four teammates. If the teammates are trash, then they could really struggle.
In this March Madness bracket strategy, I picked the winners based on which team’s second-highest scorer averages the most points. In the 2025 NCAA Tournament, the overall winner was UC San Diego.
Winner: UC San Diego
Points on the Board
In this March Madness bracket strategy, Jake picked his winners based on the point differential teams have had over the past month. If you are a team barely getting wins, you won’t cut it here!
Winner: Duke
Wake-Up Call
Just because a team lost in their conference tournament, it doesn’t mean that they are doomed for the NCAA Tournament. At the same time, a team that hasn’t lost since February isn’t necessarily in a better position to go on a run. Instead, for this bracket strategy, we are ruling out the teams who peaked too early. Instead, the teams that recently got a much-needed “wake-up call” will benefit the most.
The pick for each matchup winner was given to the team that lost most recently, with the tiebreaker going to the highest seed.
Winner: Tennessee
Battle Royale
This is a classic, but we are having an old-fashioned royale rumble! Mascot vs mascot. Now, this is subjective to you, and I decided not to do much research. Aggies are farmers, and there are too many bulldogs. Are Cardinals tougher than Blue Jays, and which large cat is the toughest in March?
There are many questions that you get to answer! In the end, the ominous Red Storm is what took the tournament for me, and the storm vs storm matchup with the Cyclones is must-watch television. Without a doubt, this is a bracket strategy you can have the most fun with.
Winner: St. John’s
Spin A Wheel
Live on the podcast, we used a wheel to determine the winner of every matchup. To determine the probability, we weighted it so a team has the weighted number of their opponent’s seed. For example, in the 5 vs 12 matchup, there are 17 imaginary spots on the wheel. The 12-Seed would have five of them while the 5-Seed would have 12.
While similar to the coin flip, the weighted wheel approach takes the opponent’s seed, thus their overall skill, into account.
Winner: Houston
Ask AI
With the rise of artificial intelligence, it could be wise to ask AI who will win. Of course, if you have Allen Iverson on speed dial, it could be worth picking his brain as well.
On FlurrySports, “The Yeti” is our AI who shares his sports takes. So, you can read our AI March Madness bracket picks here!
Only Traveling That Matters
The regions of the NCAA Tournament bracket piss me off. What’s the point? Michigan and Marquette are in the South, Florida is in the West, and freakin’ Oregon is in the East! Oregon couldn’t be any further!
For this strategy, you could measure the distance between the university and where they are playing their game. The team with the shortest travel would be the winner. With several teams traveling completely across the country, going against what the NCAA once seemed to want, there is an advantage to be had.
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