March Madness Survivor Pool Picks: Expert Advice for Sweet 16

Congratulations, your March Madness survivor entry made it to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament. That was the easy part.

Now you have to decide on a strategy, conservative or contrarian, while effectively predicting the entire Sweet 16 bracket. Don’t worry, we’re here to help with a complete guide to deciding on your survivor picks this Thursday and Friday as the March Madness bracket reaches its most competitive moments.

Let’s rattle off a complete ranking of March Madness picks you should make in the Sweet Sixteen. Almost all survivor leagues will require you to pick one Thursday or Friday team each. A few may allow you to simply select two teams for the entire round. Regardless, this ranking should translate to your needed thought process as it works from conservative picks to contrarian thoughts before it gets to faulty ones.

Let’s break down the latest college basketball odds for this round of March Madness survivor pool picks.

Best Sweet 16 March Madness survivor pool picks

1. Marquette Golden Eagles

No, the No. 2 Marquette Golden Eagles do not have the biggest spread in their favor this week. Of the eight games, the Eagles are the third-largest favorite. But the difference between them and the larger two is Marquette should be an underdog in the Elite Eight.

Perhaps Marquette should be a bigger favorite against the only Cinderella of this tournament, the No. 11 North Carolina State Wolfpack, given how healthy Eagles senior guard Tyler Kolek has looked. But regardless, the Golden Eagles will be underdogs against either Houston or Duke. That is true when looking at advanced numbers from the entire season, and it is true when narrowing the view to only the last month or month-plus.

Picking Marquette in your survivor bracket on Friday gives you the peace of mind of a three-bucket favorite while not jeopardizing a clear Final Four contender for your future survival.

2. North Carolina Tar Heels

That same logic can apply to the No. 1 North Carolina Tar Heels. They are 4.5-point favorites against the No. 4 Alabama Crimson Tide. And the Heels will be underdogs in the Elite Eight barring a seismic upset from Clemson over Arizona.
Those 4.5 points are a narrow enough spread to make you uneasy on Thursday night and understandably so. But taking a more certain team will come at the expense of your survivor entry’s viability in later rounds.

The goal is not simply to get through the Sweet Sixteen. Even if you moderate your daydreams by thinking of a chopped pot, you need to survive this weekend before those possibilities become more feasible.

This is the singular No. 1 seed that should be an underdog in the Elite Eight. It is time to burn your Tar Heels selection.

3. Illinois Fighting Illini

Let’s get bold. Taking the No. 3 Illinois Fighting Illini even as 1.5-point underdogs serves as a zag while most of your survivor pool should zig. At some point, you either need to take a contrarian approach or hope for a dozen-person split of the winnings. You didn’t enter the survivor pool hoping to split it a dozen ways. You entered it hoping to win a significant percentage of the pot.

The Illini are a popular outright pick this weekend, one agreed to by all three of your Covers.com experts. Taking them now will set up a path to a more aggressive contrarian play over the weekend.

4. Iowa State Cyclones

Frankly, this is the same thought as taking Illinois. The No. 2 Iowa State Cyclones are the shortest favorites in the Sweet Sixteen, so using them as a survivor pick will give you some anxiety.

But taking whichever of Illinois or Iowa State that you prefer helps you preserve a team you would consider in the next round. Of teams with a realistic chance at winning — let’s just rule out anyone with a moneyline of +200 or greater, as in Clemson, San Diego State, and North Carolina State — these are the only two that should be three-bucket underdogs in the Elite Eight. Playing a relative coin flip in the Sweet Sixteen may strike you as welcoming undue risk, but it adds immense value to your survivor path if you can pick this game correctly.

UConn should steamroll into the Final Four. The primary goal right now is finding teams with only one more win in their NCAA Tournament run. That is true for one of Illinois or Iowa State.

5. Duke Blue Devils

Let’s make this simple. The No. 4 Duke Blue Devils do not look like national title contenders, but they also looked so good in their two opening wins that betting against them right now is worrisome. Hence, Houston becomes an uneasy pick.

Yet, Duke has not played consistently enough this season to be looked at like someone who will be playing in the last game of the season.

That is the sweet spot right now, someone who could advance but you are confident will not win the national championship. The Blue Devils may be two-score underdogs, but if agreeing they should not be, then this is another contrarian approach to ponder in hopes of chaos hitting your survivor pool. And they should not be …

6. Houston Cougars

It‘s not so much that the No. 1 Houston Cougars are the sixth-best pick for this round of the NCAA Tournament as it is that they are among a four-team group where a pick is difficult, and after that, no team should be considered as a Sweet Sixteen survivor.

Houston is a 4-point favorite against Duke, but if looking at barttorvik.com rankings since Feb. 15, a date chosen simply to emphasize recent play, then the Cougars should be perhaps only 1-point favorites against the Blue Devils. Ken Pomeroy suggests it should be a 3-point spread.

Houston has earned some faith, hence being in the top half of this four-team group, but these two games are more difficult to project than the spreads suggest.

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7. Purdue Boilermakers

Since Feb. 15, barttorvik.com makes the No. 1 Purdue Boilermakers the slightest of favorites over the No. 5 Gonzaga Bulldogs. The spread may be 5.5 points, but those recent numbers would portray it as nearly a pick’em.

8. Gonzaga Bulldogs

And for that matter, one of these two teams has a tried-and-true NCAA Tournament coach in Mark Few. The other is coached by Matt Painter, someone whose worst nightmares all seem to come true in the Sweet Sixteen.

Here is where the balance of keeping things somewhat realistic diverges from considering contrarian approaches. There is so much value in the Gonzaga argument that taking the risk against that 5.5-point spread makes sense.

There is either not that kind of value in any of these underdogs yet to be discussed, the game is too tight to confirm an edge, or the contenders are too valuable to lose from your picks to be made in the days to come.

9. Creighton Bluejays

Since Feb. 15, you could argue the No. 3 Creighton Bluejays have been a Top-5 team. The 2-seeded Tennessee Volunteers are not far behind, neither in power rankings nor in this conversation, but there is decisive survivor value in taking Creighton here.

10. Tennessee Volunteers

You want to bet on Rick Barnes to win a third game in the same NCAA Tournament? Good luck with that.

Tennessee is not last in this ranking only because four hefty underdogs remain, as well as two loud favorites for the weekend that should not be lost from your available plays.

11. Arizona Wildcats

The No. 2 Arizona Wildcats began these rankings at No. 2. But some more thought posited they will be favored on Saturday, no matter who wins between Alabama and North Carolina. That should make Arizona a ripe Elite Eight pick.

Some still consider the Wildcats as title contenders. If so, that is further reason not to play them just yet. (Pinnacle gives Arizona the fourth-best odds at a national championship at +856, behind UConn at +198, Houston at +529 and Purdue at +613.)

12. Alabama Crimson Tide

A 4.5-point underdog that had the easiest path to this point in the tournament does not garner much faith.

13. Clemson Tigers

And neither does a 7.5-point underdog.

14. North Carolina State Wolfpack

Nor a 6.5-point underdog.

15. UConn Huskies

Wait, the No. 1 overall team, the clear championship frontrunner, the defending national champion No. 1 UConn Huskies are not last in these rankings? No, they would not be the worst pick in the Sweet Sixteen to advance in a survivor bracket.

Taking UConn on Thursday night would effectively be a contrarian play, even if the Huskies are 11-point favorites.

That would be a bet that the Huskies will not win the national championship and thus position you to outlast your pool because too many people will sit on UConn too long. But the right time to execute that strategy would be in the Elite Eight, hence keeping the Huskies so low here.

Doing it then could position you for a healthy chop, if in a league that allows those splits pre-emptively.

Take that sure thing when there are so few others. In the Sweet Sixteen, there are enough to trust, specifically the top four of these suggestions if you are able to come to a decision on the other side of the East Regional.

16. San Diego State Aztecs

This is trying too hard. Someone taking the No. 5 San Diego State Aztecs is being too contrarian. The correct contrarian play in this regional is to take UConn next round, not to bet on the best team in the country losing as a double-digit favorite.

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