Get started with your 2010 bracket strategy today!

Once the 2010 bracket gets set on Selection Sunday, this will be the hottest section on bracketscience.com. We’ll give you extensive statistics on all the 2010 tourney teams—and offer at several projected brackets based on the high-, medium- and low-risk statistical models. Here are just three of the 11 models we shared last season:

Final Four/Champ Rules model – Use the rules identified in the “Picking your Final Four and champion” article: 1) Automatically advance top seeds three rounds, two seeds two rounds, and three and four seeds one round; 2) determine your Final Four and champion based the conditions outlined in the article and fill them into your bracket; 3) advance any other Final Four qualifiers as far as possible; and 4) use upset/toss-up rules for all remaining matchups
Last year’s result: 98th percentile in the ESPN Tourney Challenge

Factors PASE – Advance one and two seeds two rounds and three and four seeds one round. Then award each team the PASE value for any of the top ten attributes in their seed class. (See “Top Attributes by Seed Class” in the Feature Articles.) For the remaining matchups, advance the team with the higher cumulative PASE attribute value. Ties go to lower seeds in upset games. To resolve ties in toss-up games, give the nod to the team that possesses the most “top-three” attributes for its seed class. If teams are still tied, opt for the higher seed.
Last year’s result: 94th percentile

Seed Match-ups – I did this strategy four years ago and it picked third-seeded Oklahoma State to win it all. They reached the Final Four, but fell short of the prize. Last year, at member requests, I resurrected the model…and it flamed out. I go matchup-by-matchup, using the "Guide to Every Seed Match-up" article, only taking the lower seed when the guidance yields better than even odds. In situations where there were countervailing factors—in other words, conditions were ripe for a Cinderella but not for a victim—I advanced the higher seed.
Last year’s result: 77th percentile

Pomeroy Pythag model – Ken Pomeroy’s possession-based statistics have proven to be solid indicators of tourney overachievement. Without going into great detail (you can do that by reading the article under “Feature Articles”), Pythag is a combined calculation of offensive and defensive efficiency. It has shown itself to be as strong as scoring margin in identifying tourney overachievers. With this in mind, I figured we do one bracket where we simply advance the team with the higher Pythag all the way to the championship. In 2008, this strategy was in the 99th percentile in the ESPN Tourney Challenge. Last year wasn’t quite so good.
Last year’s result: 53rd percentile

You’ll have to wait until Selection Sunday before all these models get unveiled. But you can get started forming your 2010 bracket strategy by applying a few simple filters to the teams in last year’s tourney…and this year’s Top 20 schools. The likelihood is that this year’s tourney champion will possess five qualities:

Their coach will have at least five years of tourney experience and one Elite Eight appearance – Only three coaches in the history of the modern era won a championship without these criteria: Steve Fisher of Michigan in 1989, Tubby Smith in 1998 and Tom Izzo of Michigan State in 2000.

The team will have been in last year’s tourney – Only one in the last 25 champions did not play in the tournament the year before. That was Syracuse in 2003.

The team will come from a Power conference – Only Louisville and UNLV, way back in 1986 and 1990 respectively, did not come from the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac 10 or SEC.

The team will be seeded no lower than four – Only two teams have won the championship with lower seeds—and the most recent was 19 years ago, when Kansas won as a No. 6 seed in 1988. The other Cinderella champ? Villanova, of course, which knocked off top-seeded Georgetown as a No. 8 seed.

The team will score at least 77 points and win by 10 or more points per game – All but three tourney champs were less prolific or dominant: Villanova, Kansas and the defensive-minded 2000 MSU squad.
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