2026 March Madness Predictions
Silver Bulletin odds for the men's NCAA tournament, powered by our new COOPER ratings.
Sure, it might seem like the world’s gone a little crazy. But at least we’ll be getting a dose of March Madness. The NCAA tournament is perhaps our very favorite event here at Silver Bulletin.1 In fact, the tournament really needs no introduction. I’ve been running versions of these projections since 2011, almost ten years before I’d even heard of Substack.
But pretty much every part of the model has changed at some point. Instead of compiling other people’s projections, we now mostly rely on our own in the form of our new COOPER ratings — although we blend them with Ken Pomeroy’s ratings (because we think Pomeroy is pretty much the best, present company excluded.) We’ve also upgraded our technology stack. Believe it or not, until last year, part of the work for our NCAA model was still being done in Microsoft Excel.2 Now we’ve built the code to run proper simulations — 100,000 at a time — which enables more sophisticated handling of injuries (and there are a lot of them this year), among other things. This isn’t an “AI-driven” model quite yet, though Claude and other AI tools are increasingly helping us smooth out some of the code's rough patches and turn these numbers around more quickly.
Still, March Madness is eternal. If nothing else, there will be upsets: we’ve calculated that the odds of having a perfect bracket are on the order of 1 in 10 quintillion. I guess I’ll just have to concede that we’re living in a simulation if it happens.
How our NCAA forecasts work
This is what we call a landing page, meaning that both the numbers and the text will change. We strongly recommend checking out the web version with this link, which provides for better rendering of charts than the Substack app or email.
We’ll update these numbers once per day after tournament games are played. In the interest of underpromising and hopefully overdelivering, sometimes the update will need to wait until the morning, but we’re hoping to get it out in the evening most of the time.
The ratings give 5/8ths of the weight to COOPER and 3/8ths to Pomeroy. There are lots of other systems out there, but basically, that’s the mix I’d use if I were betting on the games myself.
They also account for injuries, travel distance, and — once the tournament is underway — how teams have performed so far in the tourney relative to the model’s expectations. (Early-round over- or underperformance is often fairly predictive of what happens later on.) For more details about how all of this works behind the scenes, see our methodology page.
Women’s projections will follow soon — but probably tomorrow (Monday) rather than tonight.
Let’s start with the overall leaders:
In a mild surprise, Arizona is our overall tournament favorite. Based on COOPER ratings, the Wildcats are a close #3 overall behind Duke and Michigan. But Pomeroy had them pulling slightly ahead of Michigan after Michigan lost today. Also, Michigan (L.J. Cason and, possibly, Yaxel Lendeborg) and Duke (Caleb Foster and Patrick Ngongba) are dealing with injury issues, whereas Arizona is not. If those injuries are worth the equivalent of even 2 to 3 points of victory margin per game3 — — keep that in mind if one of these teams loses on a heartbreaker at the buzzer. Plus, Arizona has a slight travel advantage, as teams have to trek across the country to play them in the West region, and a relatively easy draw.
Still, there’s fairly strong alignment between who we think are the best teams and the most likely winners. A team’s draw can matter, but it tends to matter less for the elite programs. By the time you get to the Final Four, there’s usually no way around having to beat tough competition.
What you’ll find on the rest of this page — and throughout the tourney
The rest of this page contains:
Region-by-region projections of each team’s chances of advancing to each round, plus my first thoughts on each region. Analysis of the East region is free for everyone, while the rest is a bonus for paid subscribers.
Odds for forthcoming games (win probabilities, point spreads, totals, etc.)
A comparison of the ratings systems used in the projections and the impact of injuries.
And a spreadsheet version of these projections. We’re hoping to archive these so you’ll be able to see how our odds have evolved throughout the tournament.
Full disclosure: once the tournament gets underway, we’ll cut back on some of the text you’re seeing below to get you the updated numbers as quickly as possible.
Our tour begins in the East:
Duke is a great team — COOPER thinks they have a chance to rank among the all-time great teams if they win out, in fact. But the selection committee didn’t really do them any favors. St. John’s, which just won the Big East, is significantly under-seeded as a #5. Our models tend to like the Big East relative to consensus — a lot of UConn and Villanova championships over the years have endorsed that view — and would actually view the Johnnies as a candidate for a #3 seed or even a #2. Speaking of UConn, they’re in the bottom half of this bracket, along with Michigan State. While there’s not any factor in COOPER for past tournament success per se, I would note that its ratings carry over partly from year to year. So somewhere deep in its recesses is a lot of respect for what the Spartans and Huskies have accomplished over the years.
But while it’s liable to produce some great Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight games, we’re disappointed to tell you that the East isn’t the best candidate for early-round upsets. Even #8 Ohio State has a relatively clear edge over #9 TCU.4
Next up, the South, who will face the East winner in the Final Four.