3 Best Survivor picks for the first round of the men's NCAA tournament

Bored with brackets and unsatisfied just placing straight up bets on March Madness? It’s time for a survivor pool.

The rules can differ from format to format but the general idea is the same: Pick a team to win in each round and if they lose you’re out. But the catch is that you can pick a team once. So if you want UConn in the first round, you’re unable to pick them again later in the tournament.

For the purposes of these picks, we’ll be using the rule for the USA Today Survivor Pool - which you can still join here!

Each round, pick teams to win that round’s game in the men’s college basketball tournament. If those teams win in that round, you survive, earn points equal to your winning teams’ seed numbers, and advance to pick more teams next round. If any of your picks lose, you’re eliminated. You’ll need to pick three (3) teams in round 1, two (2) teams in round 2, and one (1) in each round the rest of the way. If you fail to make the required number of picks per round or have no possible teams left to pick, you’re eliminated. The player(s) who survive the longest with the highest total seed points will win the pool!

So for the first round we’re looking for teams that are definitely going to win, but have lower seeds to give us enough points to top the leaderboard.

Simple enough. Here’s who were rolling with.