For those of you who don’t have the time to get to know all 65 teams in the NCAA Tournament, filling out a bracket is a numbers game. But you have to know which ones count.

- Only three teams finishing the season ranked No. 1 have won the championship since the field expanded from 53 to 64 teams in 1985.

- Of the 17 teams in the past 13 tournaments to start play with two or fewer losses, four have been become champions.

- Top seeds remain your best bet; they’ve won 10 of the past 13 tourneys. However, the smart pick is putting two No. 1 seeds in your bracket’s Final Four. The Final Four never has been filled with all No. 1 seeds, and three top seeds have made it only three times.

- Don’t overreach: In the past dozen years, 44 of the 48 Final Four teams hailed from elite conferences (ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10 or SEC).

- Although Indiana reached the final last year, No. 5 seeds have a 4-19 third-round record in the current format. No. 8 seeds reaching the third round are 5-3 in this format.

- Top seeds always win in the first round (72-0 from 1985 through 2002), but at least one first or second seed has lost by the second round of 16 tournaments in the past 18 years.

- In the first round, look for upsets among the Nos. 5 and 6 seeds–last year three No. 5s, two No. 6s, one No. 4 and one No. 7 seed lost openers. Especially vulnerable are second tier teams from the elite conferences (except the ACC its teams, have the best overall tournament winning percentage at .661).

- Check out the conference records of at-large picks. In the past 13 years, only nine teams with losing conference records have won at least one tournament game; only two have won twice.

(information courtasy of findarticles.com)