It is here! The March Madness tournament has officially begun, and we have got you covered to track the excitement. Whether you’re planning your next big bet or just an incredibly organized college basketball fan, our NCAA March Madness Tournament Bracket template is your perfect companion.
Ready to see how this bracket template will elevate your experience? Here are the top features to help you keep up with every tournament upset, buzzer-beater, and championship matchup.⛹️
Main Features
- The Bracket Layout: The template features the standard NCAA bracket structure with 64 teams divided into East, West, South, and Midwest regions.
- Automatic Progression: This template features formulas that automatically advance teams based on the scores you enter. When you input a score for each matchup, the team with the higher score automatically advances to the next round.
- Dynamic Updates: As you will manually enter the score, the main sheet and the summary sheet will update in real time, and you can track the progress of the tournament easily.
So, now you know the main features; let’s dive in and see how you can use this template.
How to Use the NCAA March Template: A Step-by-Step Guide
Now, follow these steps to set up the tournament bracket template and catch the March Madness action!
Step 1: Open the Template
Download the template and open the NCAA March Madness Bracket. You will see the template contains the full bracket with 64 teams organized into the four regions (East, West, South, and Midwest).
Step 2: Customize Team Names and Seed Numbers
- The bracket is pre-filled with dummy data such as team names, seed numbers, etc. (East 1, West 1, etc.)
- To replace these with actual team names, click on the cell with the team name (e.g., East 1)
- Type the actual team name, e.g., Florida, Texas Tech, etc.
- Similarly, change the seed number next to the team name. For example, change “1” to “4” or any other number.
Step 3: Enter the Scores
- In each matchup, you will enter the scores for each team. For example, in the template, you can see a matchup between East 1 and East 16. So East 1 has a score of 91, you will enter that in the score cell, and similarly, East 16 has a score of 97, so that is entered in its score cell.
- Now, the template has built-in formulas that detect which team has the higher score, and that team will advance to the next stage.
Step 4: Automatic Progress to the Next Round
- After adding the scores for the first round matchup, the template automatically advances the winning teams to the next round. You will see the winners appear in the appropriate cells in the Second Round section. In the template, East 1 is eliminated, and East 16 is moved to the next round.
- The same process will repeat for the subsequent rounds:
- Regional Semifinals
- Regional Finals
- National Semifinals
- Championship
Step 5: Track Team Positions and Results in the Summary Sheet
- Now we come to the Summary Sheet, which provides a quick overview of each team’s performance from each region.
- For each region—East, West, South, and Midwest—you find separate tables. Each table includes the following columns:
- Team: Names of all the teams in the region.
- Seed Number: The seed number for each team.
- First Round: The result of the first round.
- Second Round: The result of the second round.
- Regional Semi: The result of the regional semi-finals.
- National Semi: The result of the national semi-finals.
- Total Score: The total score for each team
- The Summary Sheet’s star feature is that it automatically fills in the Won or Loss status in each round based on the scores in the bracket sheet.
Plus, you also do not need to calculate the Total Score, as that is automatically calculated too, based on the performance of the team in each round. - And finally, the highest and the lowest scores can be easily spotted because they are highlighted—green for the highest and red for the lowest—as shown in the image above with the sample data.
Step 6: Customizations
You can also easily personalize this template. For instance, you can change the cell colors and text by selecting the cell (teams, regions, etc.) and using the Fill Color and Font Color options to change the background color or font color according to your preferences.
So, now that you know all about how this template works, it’s your turn! This editable template bracket will help you map out your predictions and stay in the game from tip-off to the final buzzer. Download this bracket template in Excel or Google Sheets today, start picking your winners, and join the madness. 🏀
