What are your team's chances of winning the NCAA tournament?

The NCAA tournament has built a reputation as March Madness: three wild weekends of unpredictable upsets, buzzer-beating shots, and unsung heroes rising from anonymity. But the tournament actually unfolds each year in fairly predictable fashion. It's so predictable, in fact, that I have predicted the winners of all 63 games in the men's bracket. (You can look at my picks.)

So who's going to win it all? Not Northwestern State, Monmouth, North Carolina-Greensboro, or Alabama State. In the 16 years since the tournament expanded to 64 teams, No. 16 seeds have a record of 0-64. (1-65 if you count last night's elimination contest between Northwestern State and Winthrop.) One site puts the odds of a No. 16 seed winning the whole tournament at 384 million-to-1. The No. 15 seeds haven't done much better, winning only three of the 64 first-round contests in which they've played. Princeton, Hampton, Holy Cross, and Eastern Illinois are all safe bets to go down in the first round.

The Rest of the First Round

One of the No. 14 seeds, on the other hand, has a good chance of advancing. Since 1985, the year the tournament went to 64 teams, a No. 3 seed has fallen in the first round 13 times, or 20 percent of the time. This year, Western Kentucky center Chris Marcus has a decent chance of leading his team to a first-round victory over Florida, but I'm not brave enough to pick the Hilltoppers. I penciled all four No. 3 seeds into the second round.

What about the No. 13 seeds? They win almost 20 percent of the time. I picked No. 13 Hofstra to upend No. 4 UCLA. History's on my side: In the '90s, UCLA fell in the first round to Penn State, Tulsa, Princeton, and Detroit. Go Pride!

Then there are the No. 12 seeds, famous for upsetting No. 5 seeds. It didn't happen last year, but it happens more than 25 percent of the time—in 17 of the 64 matchups since 1985. Who's it gonna be this year? The trendy pick is Gonzaga, one of just five teams to advance to the Sweet 16 the past two years. (The others are Duke, Florida, Michigan State, and Purdue.) I say the trend stops this year. Instead, look for BYU to beat Cincinnati by making free throws and three-pointers by the bucket-load.

A No. 11 seed is likely to advance, too. No. 6 seeds go down in the first round 36 percent of the time. I like those odds so much I picked it to happen twice, with Texas getting befuddled by Temple's matchup zone and USC losing to an emotional Oklahoma State team. (Eddie Sutton has never lost a first-round game in the NCAA tournament.) You can overpick upsets in the first round, of course, but in the average year, four of the 16 teams seeded between No. 11 and No. 14 advance to the second round. Granted, the odds are against picking the correct four teams, but you might as well give it a shot.

As for the teams seeded No. 7 through No. 10, look at it this way: The 8-9 games are pretty much a coin flip. Pick whomoever you want. I went with three 9s—Missouri, St. Joseph's, and Charlotte—and an 8, California. Not that it matters. They're all going to lose in the second round anyway.

No. 7 seeds beat No. 10 seeds 60 percent of the time, so I went with Penn State, Arkansas, and Iowa but picked No. 10 Butler to topple a slumping Wake Forest team. (Note: This doesn't always work. In 1999, all four No. 10s won.)

The Sweet 16 and Beyond