Not picking the obvious Blue Blood is the key to success in this year's NCAA bracket

Between the Pipes is helping you search for value in your 2025 March Madness picks

A version of this article ran in 2017, 2018, 2022, 2023, and 2024.

It’s the time of year where everyone scrambles to fill out their NCAA bracket, and if you’re like me, you’ve watched close to zero college basketball throughout the regular season to get ready for it. And because you don’t live under a rock, you’re tempted to pick one of the sport’s premier teams to win it all.

While that could get you far, your office March Madness pool is as much about predicting basketball outcomes as it is predicting the behavior of your coworkers. Similar to what I wrote last year, I have a simple philosophy when it comes to trying to win my pool, and I encourage you to buy into it too:

1. Look for value against the public in picking early round games, but don’t get too crazy with upset-minded picks.

2. Keep your Final Four intact (by eschewing tempting Cinderella stories and picking higher seeds).

3. Make a “contrarian” pick to win it all.

The Wall Street Journal’s Andrew Beaton and Ben Cohen also write a version of that recommended approach every year. Their latest advice: “You should study the wisdom of the crowd—and then run away from that crowd…Basically, you want to think like a value investor.”

If you follow that maxim there’s one team you probably shouldn’t pick this year because everyone else is going to: Duke.

You may have heard the Blue Devils are the top-ranked team in the country by a variety of metrics. They have the the best offensive rating and a top-five defensive rating, according to Sports Reference’s SRS ratings. Ken Pomeroy, the stats guru everyone turns to this time of year, has the the Blue Devils as the No. 1 team in the land, according to his efficiency ratings. They also finished tops in the regular season in both the AP rankings and Coaches Poll this year.

Even if you haven’t watched any college basketball this year you’ve probably heard the Blue Devils are back among the elite by now. In fact, with star freshman and surefire NBA starter Cooper Flagg leading the way, this year’s team is considered to be the best version of Duke since 2001.

But the thing is, if you know these stats, so do your fellow bracketologists. If you’re going to stand out from the crowd you’ll likely need to get behind a different team in 2025. So who should it be?

Two other No.1 seeds — Auburn and Houston — stand out to me as being really good value picks this year¹. Both the Tigers and Cougars have nearly a 15 percent chance of winning the national title when looking at a composite average of several experts’ models².

While I typically look for teams not on the 1-seed line, this year it’s hard to pass up the opportunity Houston offers. Kelvin Sampson’s team has the second best chance to be crowned champion at an average of nearly 16 percent among the experts’ models, while only seven percent of ESPN’s entrants are picking the Cougars to win it all — that’s a net difference of more than seven percentage points. If you’re into taking advantage of arbitrage opportunities this seems as good as any since I’ve been tracking these metrics³.

If we look a little further down the bracket, Texas Tech and Maryland offer good value for their lower seeds as well. Iowa State joins those two schools by having a greater than one percentage point difference between the expert and crowd selections.

The other Blue Blood to steer clear of is Florida — I wouldn’t call one of the best teams in the country a fraud, but considering how many people are picking the Gators you would have to get an unrealistic amount of picks correct in the early rounds to have a shot at winning money in your pool by hitching your wagon to them. Plus, Houston has slightly better outright odds than Florida if you believe the modelers.

Bookmakers’ implied probabilities as of Monday night have Duke and Florida as the favorites, followed by Auburn and Houston, if Vegas odds are more your speed. I posted about the latest title odds from various sportsbooks last night — I’m aiming to update that post every day from now until the end of the tournament.

All that being said, I gave the same advice last year — stay away for the top-seeded and favorite UConn Huskies — and they did nothing but win their second straight national title. But no matter what ratings system you look it’s more likely than not Duke won’t win it this year, and in fact, you’re better off on picking the field even if you include the second most picked team in Florida.

Do with that what you will, but no matter your decisions, let the best time of year on the sports calendar begin.

1. ESPN national bracket data is as of Monday, March 17.

2. Nate Silver, Ken Pomeroy and Neil Paine.

3. Code to recreate these plots can be found on my Github. I’ll update the charts as new data becomes available ahead of the first round games Thursday.