2025 March Madness Survivor Guide: Best Strategy & Tips to Win NCAA Tournament Survivor Pool Contest

March Madness survivor pools are the perfect accompaniment for bracket challenges, and we're offering through our March Madness survivor guide to offer our best strategies and tips to help you win your NCAA Tournament contest pool this year.

If you're new to survivor pools, we also broke down everything you need to know about how March Madness survivor pools work and how to run your own.

🧠 Best strategy & tips to win your March Madness survivor pool contest

📊 Know the rules

Not every survivor pool follows the same set of rules. There are two main styles of running a March Madness survivor pool with the round-by-round format and the daily format, so knowing what the specifics are to your survivor pool is key to developing your plan of attack.

You have far more wiggle room with a round-by-round survivor pool than with a daily pool, meaning you won't need to be quite as strategic with your picks in that format. The maximum amount of teams you're picking in round-by-round is six if you make it to the NCAA Tournament championship. But with daily, it balloons up to 10 with you needing to pick a team on each day that there are games.

There are also several variations within survivor pools that could impact your approach. Generally, you can only pick the same team once and one wrong pick leads to your elimination, but some pools may change those rules. Some may even get rid of elimination altogether and implement a point system that rewards riskier picks with more points and ensures everyone can participate until the end of the NCAA Tournament.

📚 Study up

So you've joined a March Madness survivor pool? Now it's time to familiarize yourself with as many teams as you can to have a strong understanding of what matchups are potentially exploitable - like finding a team who may be underseeded to pick because it's unlikely many other participants in the pool will take that team.

Whether you're a college basketball maniac, or new to watching the sport, there are several resources out there that you can lean on to help better your understanding of the teams in the NCAA Tournament this year. It's not easy to know all 64 teams (or 68 including all of the First Four teams).

Don't be afraid to use the advanced metrics from KenPom and EvanMiya to help inform your picks. Sometimes a higherseeded team may be overrated by the selection committee because they're from a major conference, when in reality the advanced metrics point to the mid-major program they're facing as the more favorable team.

Looking at the favorites via the odds from our March Madness betting sites is also a good way to get a feel for which teams are "supposed to win" and by how much. The oddsmakers have data informing how they're setting the odds for the games, and those are often a far more helpful indicator of how the teams playing are supposed to perform against one another than just looking at seeds.

And of course, the Final Four odds are helpful too with the top of the oddsboard from that futures market being full of the best teams in the country that are supposed to make it to the final weekend of the NCAA Tournament.

We'll also be sharing our best survivor picks every single day of the tournament, so check back each morning for our thoughts on the best strategic options each day.

🧩 Think big picture

It can be easy to get caught up on focusing on one day (or round) at a time when it comes to a March Madness survivor pool. However, that can lead to issues down the line if you're limited to just picking each team once.

Rather than jump on No. 1 seeds like Duke or Auburn immediately because they have Wooden Award odds contenders leading them, it's better to avoid the most obvious sure things on the first weekend of the tournament. You'd want to save the Blue Devils and Tigers for deeper into the survivor pool because they've been head and shoulders better than everyone else this season.

Instead, when you go to make your initial survivor pool picks, the best way to go about it is to sit down with the entire bracket and fill it out like you would with a bracket challenge. From there, you can identify teams you're confident in and plan to take in each round, or on each day, of the tournament.

Why would you waste a pick on Duke, Auburn, Houston, or Florida in the first round when there are teams seeded No. 3 through No. 6 that are just as capable of getting you through the opening weekend of the tournament? You don't want to rely too heavily on backing teams that are seeded too low, but you're going to need those No. 1 and No. 2 seeds for the Sweet 16 through to the national championship.

The bracket naturally gives you structure to build around with your plan, so use it like a roadmap when making your survivor pool decisions. Think about which teams will advance and when's the best time to use them.

 🔍 Identify matchups 

This is probably the most important piece during the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament when we get a plethora of upsets. For example, there's a strong history of No. 11 seeds taking down No. 6 seeds, something that's important to consider when figuring out how to fill out a March Madness bracket.

There are higher seeds that tend to go to underachieving programs that hail from power conferences and lower seeds that get handed to super-talented teams that just so happen to play in a low or mid-major conference. Those are matchups you're going to want to take note of and avoid.

An example of this is backing a "blue blood" like Kansas most years would probably work out on that first weekend, but the Jayhawks have been disappointing and sporadic all season, so you'd likely want to avoid banking on them to win.

Using advanced metrics to gauge how strong a team has been this year can help you find teams seeded somewhere in the No. 3 to No. 6 range to pick on that opening weekend. It can also help you target the worst teams in the tournament to pick against.

As you get deeper into March Madness and the survivor pool, you can identify the most favorable matchups using advanced metrics while potentially avoiding taking the top teams left too early.

⚖️ Risk vs. reward

While nailing an upset pick in the NCAA Tournament gives you major bragging rights, it's not the best approach to take when making survivor pool picks.

Unless you're in a pool that has a point system that rewards riskier picks, it's hard to justify taking a team that isn't a top-six seed at almost any point in the tournament. (Remember, you only need to hit six to 10 correct picks to be perfect in the tournament, so even picking outside of the top four seeds isn't necessary.) 

Unless there's a blatant mismatch that you're confident in, you don't have a clear reason to make riskier picks in a survivor pool. Trying to outsmart everyone can often just lead to taking an L sooner than the participants who haven't watched college basketball all year but rely on picking the higher seeds.

The early rounds have mismatches, so find them to exploit them, but don't expect to live long by taking huge upsets. Instead, be calculated with your risky picks early on and use advanced metrics to find the No. 5 seed that has a blatant advantage over a No. 12 seed.

Many participants will use up their No. 1 and No. 2 seeds early, but you don't have to as long as you stay smart about it. Use those mid-tier teams that are just as likely to win as those marquee powerhouses.

🌟 Is popular always better?

Again, many participants will be looking to just make it through that first weekend and will likely take No. 1 to No. 3 seeds early on. That's a solid approach if you want to make it to the Sweet 16 ... but when the Final Four rolls around, they might not have any options left.

So if you can avoid the popular picks - usually high-seeded brand-name programs like Duke, Auburn, Florida, Houston, Alabama, Tennessee, Michigan State - you'll have the best repertoire of options left when it gets to crunch time. Also, avoiding the most popular picks can pay off if there is an upset and a large chunk of the survivor pool is eliminated early.

A good way to find out which teams could be the most popular to pick, and therefore avoid using early, is by checking the college basketball odds. If you click on the matchups listed there, you can see what percentage of the public is backing a specific team to cover the spread. 

It's going to pay off to focus on taking teams with blatant advantages based on the advanced metrics that aren't those top-two seeded popular teams. That way, you'll have the best options saved for the last few rounds.

⏳ Save the best for last

If you can get to the Elite Eight having not used a No. 1 or No. 2 seed, you'll be in incredible shape. A lot of those participants that ride the "blue bloods' to the Elite Eight will regret having burned those top options when it matters most.

Ultimately, it's not going to win you the prize if you reach the Elite Eight just to fizzle out because you don't have those No. 1 and No. 2 seeds available to you. So pick lower seeds (No. 3 to No. 6) early in those first three rounds, but ensure they have favorable matchups based on advanced metrics.

Don't pick a team just because they're favored, and avoid programs and seeds that have a history of disappointing in the NCAA Tournament.

🔄 Adapt, adapt, adapt!

Before you make any picks, look at the bracket and build out your survivor pool plan. Fill out the bracket and based on how you have everything play out, rank your ideal survivor picks in each round, or for each day.

That gives you a plan to lean on and will ensure you have several different teams to choose between based on what happens in each round. But remember, there's always going to be wild upsets in the madness that is the NCAA Tournament in March, so be ready to change your plan and adapt to how the bracket plays out.

You should also be paying attention to what's going on with the other participants in the pool. Take a look at what teams they've used, look at how may participants are getting eliminated after each round, and from there you can adapt your plan too to see if you have more wiggle room to make safer picks.

Adapt so that you can survive and advance this March. We're here to help with our best picks every day (and round) through the end of the tournament.

📅 March Madness key dates

• Selection Sunday: March 16
• First Four: March 18-19
• First round: March 20-21
• Second round: March 22-23
• Sweet 16: March 27-28
• Elite Eight: March 29-30
• Final Four: Saturday, April 5
• National championship game: Monday, April 7

🔮 March Madness predictions for every game today

• Louisville vs. Creighton prediction
• Purdue vs. High Point prediction
• Wisconsin vs. Montana prediction
• Houston vs. SIU Edwardsville prediction
• Auburn vs. Alabama State prediction
• Clemson vs. McNeese prediction
• BYU vs. VCU prediction
• Gonzaga vs. Georgia prediction
• Tennessee vs. Wofford prediction
• Kansas vs. Arkansas prediction
• Texas A&M vs. Yale prediction
• Missouri vs. Drake prediction
• UCLA vs. Utah State prediction
• St. John's vs. Omaha prediction
• Michigan vs. UC San Diego prediction
• Texas Tech vs. UNC Wilmington prediction

💰 March Madness betting odds pages

🏀 Best March Madness betting sites

Looking to bet on the NCAA Tournament? Here are our best March Madness betting sites as determined by our expert team at Sportsbook Review, along with our best March Madness betting promos ahead of the NCAA Tournament.

• Caesars Promo Code: SBRBONUSDYW | Read our Caesars Review
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• bet365 Bonus Code: SBRBONUS | Read our bet365 Review
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• DraftKings Promo Code | Read our DraftKings Review

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