Join SwimSwam’s March Madness Bracket Challenge!

Although SwimSwam will be focused on providing coverage of the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships in the next few weeks, it is also doing its second annual March Madness bracket challenge for both the men’s and women’s NCAA Division I basketball tournaments. Groups have been made for each tournament via the ESPN Tournament Challenge website.

The NCAA tournament brackets will be revealed on Sunday night, with the men’s selection show happening on CBS at 6 p.m. ET while the women’s show will happen on ESPN at 8 p.m. After brackets are set up, individuals will have until the tournament’s start (March 21 at 12:15 p.m. for the men, March 22 at 11:30 a.m. for the women) to fill out their own brackets.

You must register for an ESPN account to be eligible to participate.

SwimSwam’s March Madness Bracket Challenge:

• Click here to enter the men’s tournament challenge
• Click here to enter the women’s tournament challenge

For SwimSwam’s tournament challenge, participants will only be permitted to fill out one bracket. Participants are awarded points for accuracy of their brackets, and the highest-scoring participant will be crowned the winner.

It is extraordinarily difficult to make a March Madness perfect bracket. According to Daniel Wilco of NCAA.com, the odds of filling a perfect bracket as an individual knowledgeable about basketball are 1 in 120.2 billion.

Top teams like defending champions UConn, Purdue, Houston, and UNC headline the men’s NCAA tournament. However, many highly seeded had been upset in earlier rounds during last year’s tournament — no. 16 Farleigh Dickinson beat no. 1 Purdue and no. 15 Princeton beat no. 2 Arizona. Expect this year’s tournament to be just as unpredictable and upset-filled.

Favorites to win the women’s tournament include the undefeated South Carolina, defending champions LSU, Iowa, and USC. Iowa point guard Caitlin Clark, who is arguably the top name in college basketball, will be a massive draw, while other stars like LSU’s Angel Reese, USC’s Juju Watkins, UConn’s Paige Bueckers, and Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo will also make look to make a mark.