The 2019 NCAA Tournament is finally here. After a pair of First Four games in Dayton, the final 64-team 2019 March Madness bracket will be determined. Then, it's on to Thursday's 2019 NCAA Tournament schedule, which starts with 7-seed Louisville facing 10-seed Minnesota at 12:15 p.m. ET, followed by 3-seed LSU, the regular season SEC champions, facing 14-seed Yale. With very little time left before 2019 NCAA Tournament bracket pools lock, rabid fans and Average Joes alike are madly filling out college basketball picks in hopes of winning their March Madness pools. Beating your friends, family, and co-workers is all about striking a balance between backing upsets that will give you an edge and identifying teams that are the safest bets to make deep runs. After all, it's been 11 years since all four No. 1 seeds made the Final Four, so relying on top seeds is far from a sure bet. Before you enter any 2019 March Madness picks, be sure to consult the optimal 2019 NCAA bracket from the proven computer model at SportsLine.
Their proven projection model has simulated every game in the tournament 10,000 times. It absolutely crushed its March Madness picks last year, finishing in the top five percent of all CBS Sports brackets and calling Villanova to win it all.
It knows how to spot an upset as well. The same model has produced brackets that have nailed 12 of the 18 first-round upsets by double-digit seeds the last three years. It also nailed some massive upsets last year, including huge wins by No. 13 seed Buffalo over No. 4 seed Arizona, No. 11 seed Loyola-Chicago over No. 6 seed Miami, and No. 10 seed Butler over No. 7 seed Arkansas.
There's simply no reason to rely on luck when there's proven technology to help you dominate your 2019 NCAA Tournament pools. Now, the model has simulated every possible matchup in the 2019 NCAA Tournament and revealed its optimal bracket. You can only see it over at SportsLine.
If you're looking for a pick that will give you a huge edge in your 2019 March Madness bracket, SportsLine's model says you should back No. 5 Marquette with confidence. Look for the Golden Eagles to bounce back from a tough end of the season to make a Sweet 16 run.
The Golden Eagles are coming off a strong 24-9 season in which they finished second in the Big East and had several head-turning victories. They defeated Louisville, Kansas State, and Wisconsin during the non-conference slate and went 12-6 in the Big East even though they ended the season with a tough stretch.
The model projects that Marquette bounces back and makes a run to the Sweet 16 now that its offense has turned it around, scoring an average of 83 points in its last three games after failing to break 65 in its three previous contests. The Golden Eagles will start their tournament run with a highly-anticipated 5 vs. 12 matchup against Murray State that has many people calling an early March Madness upset.
That game will pit Big East Player of the Year Markus Howard against a future top-five pick in the NBA Draft, Murray State's Ja Morant. Both guards are explosive scorers, but the model gives the edge to Howard and Marquette with the expectation that they'll put their recent struggles behind them. Both teams can score, but Marquette is a much better three-point shooting team (39 percent to 34 percent), which is why you should lock in the Golden Eagles to the Sweet 16 as one of your top 2019 March Madness picks.
Another curveball: the No. 9 seed Baylor Bears win the always-tough-to-predict 8 vs. 9 matchup against Syracuse. Baylor went 19-13 this season, but the Bears loaded up on high-quality wins, beating Oregon, Texas Tech, Oklahoma (twice), and Iowa State (twice). And despite being bounced by eventual champions Iowa State in the Big 12 Tournament and having lost four straight entering the NCAA Tournament 2019, the model is backing Baylor with confidence.
The Bears' primary means of attacking opponents is on the offensive glass. Baylor ranks fourth in the nation in offensive rebounding percentage (36.6) and gets a first-round matchup with a Syracuse squad that is one of the worst defensive rebounding teams, ranking 310th by grabbing just 69.4 percent of defensive rebounds.
In its loss to Iowa State, Baylor still out-rebounded the Cyclones 35-32 and grabbed 14 offensive boards to Iowa State's 10. And in an eight-point loss against Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse, Baylor hauled down a whopping 18 rebounds on the offensive end against the Jayhawks' 12. The Bears' ability to crash the boards is why the model predicts them to pull off the upset in 53.5 percent of simulations.
So who else makes a deep run in the NCAA Tournament? Visit SportsLine now to see which No. 3 seed reaches the Final Four, and see who wins every single game, all from the model that has nailed 12 of the 18 double-digit upsets in the first round the last three years.
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