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NCAA Tournament Survivor Guide For Round 1 (Thursday)

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So you thought survivor pools only applied to the NFL season? On the contrary, survivor contests are widely popular for the NCAA tournament. They offer an alternative way for those whose brackets habitually get busted early to stay involved in the action.

Much like the NFL version, NCAA tournament survivor pools require one to pick one team each round, and once you select a team, you cannot use them again. However, the similarities end there, as the NCAA version’s strategies differ vastly.

One needs to remember that you could lose your entry without ever making a losing pick but instead run out of teams from which to choose. All teams in NFL survivor pools are available for selection except the ones already chosen. In NCAA tournament survivor pools, as teams get eliminated, the collection of teams shrinks. Thus, if you make it to the national championship unscathed, but the two teams are Gonzaga and Arizona, you are out if you have already used both. That is just one example of a different thinking process for navigating these tricky contests.

Throughout the tournament, one has to make eight picks: two from the First Round (one for each day played), two from the Second Round (one for each day played), and one from the Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final Four, and National Championship.

Each round, we will provide our analysis broken down by the following categories: Best Picks, Favorites on Upset Alert, and Teams That Should be Saved for Later Use.

Here is a list of odds for all the favorites to win their Round 1 matchups on Thursday (odds courtesy of BettingPros consensus).

Check out all of our coverage for the 2023 NCAA Tournament >>

Best Picks

UCLA (-2800), Arizona (-1115), Arkansas (-150)

If you think the UCLA Bruins can repeat their Final Four run from two years ago, they belong in the “teams that should be saved category.” However, injuries have hurt UCLA’s long-term outlook, even if center Adem Bona returns soon from a shoulder injury that kept him out of the Pac-12 Tournament championship. UCLA had won 12 consecutive games heading into the conference tournament championship against Arizona but was held to 59 points by a team that ranked sixth in the league in adjusted defensive efficiency. Much of that was by design, as Bruins head coach Mick Cronin slowed the tempo down and limited possessions against the fast-paced Wildcats. However, the Bruins project to be a different team defensively than one that earned the No. 1 ranking in KenPom’s adjusted defensive efficiency metric, especially since their best perimeter defender, Jaylen Clark, is out for the season with a torn Achilles. UCLA has a challenging region with Gonzaga and defending national champion Kansas on its path to a Final Four, so we are not as high on the Bruins advancing as far as others, and we do not mind using them in survivor pools early.

Similarly to UCLA, the Arizona Wildcats are a No. 2 seed that we do not project to be a Final Four team, thus warranting a play on them early. Arizona ranks 41st in adjusted defensive efficiency, but that rating drops to 79th since the start of February. In addition, Arizona could not reach the Elite Eight a year ago despite having NBA talents like Christian Koloko, Dalen Terry, and Ben Mathurin on the roster. Thus, a team that can force them to play in the half-court is more than capable of an upset, and we do not see Arizona making it past No. 1 overall seed Alabama even if it does reach the Elite Eight. However, the Wildcats should have too much depth inside for Princeton’s Tosan Evbuomwan, last year’s Ivy League Player of the Year, to deal with.

If you want a leg up on the competition in survivor pools, you will benefit from correctly selecting a more risky play. One team that fits this bill perfectly is the No. 8 seed Arkansas Razorbacks, a preseason AP top-ten team before injuries hit them hard. Arkansas still misses center Travon Brazile but is the healthiest it has been in quite some time, with NBA prospect Nick Smith back playing the wing for the last nine games. Smith has scored 16+ points in four of the previous six games, and he raises the ceiling considerably for a Razorbacks team that is battle-tested out of the rugged SEC. Illinois makes just 68% of its free throws (307th in the country), and we expect that to cost it in a game that projects to be close. In addition, Arkansas’s length on the perimeter should bother an Illinois offense that tends to play a lot of isolation basketball late in shot clocks, as evidenced by their 284th-lowest assist rate per field goals made (ranked 13th in that metric in Big Ten play).

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Favorites on Upset Alert

Tennessee (-590), Virginia (-240), San Diego State (-235), Texas A&M (-165), West Virginia (-145), Northwestern (-125), Utah State (-120), Auburn (-120)

Teams That Should be Saved for Later Use

Kansas (-10000), Alabama (-5000), Houston (-5000), Texas (-1250), Duke (-275)

Kansas, Houston, Texas, Duke, and Alabama are all Elite 8 contenders, at the very least. So while no team from this list is in danger of a first-round upset, keep them handy for the later rounds when they are still prohibitive favorites while fewer teams are available to choose from.

Use our FREE bracket optimizer to build a winning men’s NCAA tournament bracket & take down your contest >>


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Mike Spector is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from Mike, check out his archive and follow him @MikeSpector01.

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