NCAA Bracket Picks Release Schedule For 2024
We release our NCAA Bracket Picks product features in phases, starting several hours after the completion of the 2024 NCAA Selection Show.
| Target Time | Features Included | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Sunday March 17 2am (Mon) ET / 11pm PT |
Tools & Data Predictions, stats, and data available, including: Round Survival Odds Bracket Builder Tool Data Grid Matchup Analysis Tool Team Notes Q&A Forum |
DONE 2:05am ET/ 11:05pm PT |
| Monday March 18 7pm ET |
Initial Brackets Quick-turnaround brackets for subscribers with early submission deadlines available. |
DONE 6:55pm ET |
| Monday March 18 9pm ET |
Live Chat Join a live chat with Jason Lisk from our team to discuss this year’s tournament. |
DONE 9:00pm ET |
| Wednesday March 20 4pm ET |
Official Brackets Final brackets incorporating our full analysis and optimization process available. |
DONE 3:55pm ET |
| Wednesday March 27 4pm ET |
Sweet 16 Brackets Brackets for “Second Chance” pools starting with the Sweet 16 round available. |
ON SCHEDULE |
About Our Release Schedule
As soon as the NCAA Selection Show ends on Selection Sunday, March 17, we will spring into action to prepare and release our NCAA Bracket Picks product for 2024.
The table above outlines our planned release schedule for this year. As features become available, we will send out notification emails to subscribers.
(If you want to receive these emails, make sure you haven’t unsubscribed to TeamRankings/PoolGenius emails or marked them as spam in the past! Double check that support@teamrankings.com is on your approved/safe sender list in your email program.)
The launch times in the table above are targets and not absolute guarantees. There are many moving parts and dependencies involved with releasing various features of this product, such as receiving information from external data providers in a timely fashion.
First, Tools & Data
Given the amount of information and number of features included in the NCAA Bracket Picks product, it typically takes us the rest of Selection Sunday night to make the first group of features available to subscribers, after the bracket is announced.
These features include our initial tournament predictions (e.g. round by round survival odds for every team) along with matchup predictions and data analysis tools.
Then, Brackets
After our initial predictions and data tools are released, we shift our focus to generating ready-to-play brackets customized for various bracket pool sizes and scoring systems.
We plan to do an initial release of customized brackets on Monday, then a second release of our Official Brackets on Wednesday.
Each bracket release will be accompanied by supporting explanation and analysis that we publish in our 2024 Bracket Writeup.
Why Aren’t All Data Features Ready Right Away?
We wish we could just turn on all features of NCAA Bracket Picks as soon as the Selection Show ends and be done with it, but unfortunately, it’s not that easy.
One challenge is that we don’t find out about the final NCAA Tournament field and bracket (i.e. which teams got in, their seeding, and how the bracket is set up) any earlier than you do.
As a result, we can’t even start most of the processes related to setting up the product until Selection Sunday evening. And even at that point:
- It takes time for our data provider to send us matchup information for every First Round game.
- It takes even more time for certain key information, like betting odds for First Round games or public picking trends on the biggest bracket pool hosting sites, to become available.
- Once we have all the data we need, it takes even more time for our models to generate game predictions and compute round by round survival odds for every tournament team.
- Last but certainly not least, it takes even more time for us to do a thorough final review and quality check of all product data and features before we release them to subscribers.
Selection Sunday night is an absolute mad sprint for us, but we make sure we release our tournament predictions and data tools before we turn in for the night—even if it takes us into the wee hours of the morning.
Why Does It Take Until Monday Evening ET To Release Customized Brackets?
After all our data-focused tools are launched, we then begin the process of creating ready-to-play brackets that are customized for various pool rules and scoring systems. These brackets give our subscribers the maximum edge in their pools.
In order to create these brackets, we have to run millions of computer simulations. We simulate the outcomes of the 2024 NCAA tournament millions of times. We also simulate the outcomes of a huge variety of brackets and bracket pools (of various rules and sizes) based on the results of those tournament simulations.
It takes a lot of computing power to run all these simulations, and to iterate our bracket testing until our algorithms identify the brackets with the best expected performance in 2024. As a result, it will take until later in the day on Monday, March 18 to generate our initial batch of ready-to-play brackets for subscriber pools.
(To get these initial brackets done, we have around 20 high-powered computer servers at Amazon Web Services crunching numbers from Selection Sunday night through Monday afternoon.)
Important: We release initial brackets on Monday for the benefit of subscribers in pools with unusually early bracket submission deadlines. You should only use them if you have to submit your brackets before we do our Official Brackets release on Wednesday, March 20.
Why Are Official Brackets Not Released Until Late Afternoon ET on Wednesday?
The longer we have to analyze data, run simulations, and respond to late-breaking news, the bigger the edge we can deliver to subscribers.
For example, if a key player on a top team gets injured at practice on Tuesday night, any brackets we released on Monday may no longer give you the best chance to win your pool.
In many bracket pools, you have until tipoff of the first game of the tournament’s First Round (i.e. around noon ET on Thursday) to submit a bracket, or perhaps until late on Wednesday the night before. In that case, you have absolutely nothing to gain by submitting a bracket early.
After many years of collecting feedback from subscribers, we’ve determined that releasing our Official Brackets later in the day on Wednesday, the day before the First Round begins, offers the best compromise between two conflicting goals:
- Deliver the maximum edge to our subscribers
- Give subscribers enough time to review and submit brackets without an overly hectic last-minute rush
In most years, there aren’t many significant changes between initial brackets and Official Brackets for most pool types. Still, there’s still a lot of potential value in preserving the option to incorporate any news that breaks closer to Wednesday into our Official Brackets.
Can I Still Get A Bracket On Monday or Tuesday For A Pool That Doesn’t Have An Early Submission Deadline?
Sure. You can generate customized brackets for any pool you create at any point after we release our initial brackets on Monday. You don’t have to wait until Wednesday or Thursday just to see some brackets.
In this case, an “Update Brackets” button for that pool will appear whenever we release an updated set of brackets (with one exception, explained below). Clicking that “Update Brackets” button will update your picks to our most recent bracket release.
(The one exception is if your pool includes the First Four play-in round games. In that case, we will freeze any brackets you generated for that pool once the First Four round starts, and you will not be able to update them after that.)
Just keep in mind that our primary focus is on making our Official Brackets the best they can be, and the possibility for significant changes exists between our initial bracket release and our Official Brackets release.
As a result, we don’t want to put a lot of emphasis on explaining or fielding questions about our initial brackets, versus focusing our time on doing more research for the Official Brackets. Every minute counts.
Are There Only Two Bracket Releases Total?
Our plan is to have two bracket releases: initial brackets on Monday and Official Brackets on Wednesday. We’ve used this approach for many years and it almost always has worked well.
With that said, we may have years where circumstances cause that plan to change. The biggest risk we face regarding bracket releases is the chance that something unexpected and very impactful to bracket strategy happens after we release our Official Brackets on Wednesday.
If that kind of a perfect storm occurs, we may decide that doing a third bracket release on Thursday morning is the best solution. Alternatively, we may just issue some guidance for tweaking our Official Brackets both via the site and via email.