I'm excited to finally write that it is that time of the year again for college basketball. We are now only 4 short weeks away from the college basketball conference tournament season tipping off, which means it's time to fire up our NCAA Basketball Conference Tournament pool! Coming up during the week of 2/23/2025, I will be sending out the rules and entry sheet for the 2025 NCAA Basketball Conference Tournament pool. This will be our 15th year of running the pool, which means we have been doing this longer than the iPad has existed, longer than Brexit, and we pre-date the Occupy Wallstreet movement. The players change, a few teams come and go, but the same format for teams to punch a ticket to the NCAA tournament has been constant. 🏀
Before we dive into the details of the 2025 NCAA Basketball Conference Tournament pool, let's first take a look back at our 2024 winner, (Basket) Balls Boy, who won with 19 points, edging out one other player by only 1 point. (Basket) Balls Boy had 14 wins, while his competition also had 14 wins, but it was the accumulation of 5 bonus points that catapulted him to victory. This shows how important it is to reach for those lower seeded teams. Bonus points really matter if you want to win this pool! 🥇
Top 4 From the 2024 Pool
Below is a preview of the rules for the 2025 pool. As of right now, we have zero rule changes for 2025, but if you have any proposed rule changes or suggestions that you would like to see in 2026, please let me know. What we will see different in this years pool is no Pac-12 conference, 2 brand new Division I teams, a larger ACC, B1G, Big 12, and SEC, and many more conference and team changes.
If you are interested in playing this year, please let me know and I will reserve a spot for you as we have been capping the number of entries the past few years. The game is very simple, all you do is pick who you think is going to win each of the 31 NCAA conference tournaments. This is our first year not picking 32 conferences, I'd expect we see much lower scores from our winner this year due to less conferences and more teams in conferences.
The entry fee will remain the same at $50 with the following payout structure:
- 1st place receives a 60% payout
- 2nd place receives a 25% payout
- 3rd place receives a 15% payout
- 4th place receives a free entry for the 2026 pool (Napervillains have the free entry for 2025!)
This pool really does have a very easy scoring system. The person with the combination of most correct picks, including bonus points, wins the pool. All ties in the standings are settled using the following tiebreakers:
- Overall total w/bonus points
- Total wins
- Accuracy
- Least amount of losses
- Closest SEC championship game total
Bonus points breakdown:
The bonus point scoring is super simple. For every 3 seed of lower conference tournament winner that you pick, you will be awarded 1 bonus point. In 2024, it was madness with 14 out of 32 conference tournament winners being a 3 seed or lower. Getting bonus points is important if you want to win the pool, especially when almost half of the teams last year were lower seeds.
Also, you can win money without winning the actual pool. 🤑
This pool is meant to be fun and keep people in it as long as possible, all the way to the last game played on Selection Sunday. No matter where you're at in the standings, you can still win money 4 different ways, even if you're outside the top 3. It's likely we'll have some ties, so the money gets split among all winners in the event of a tie. Technically, you can be towards the bottom of the standings on Selection Sunday, and still win every one of these categories.
- (1) Most bonus points - The person with the most total bonus points (picking 3 seed or lower winners) will win $150. In 2024, Basket Balls Boy took all that money by himself with 5 bonus points.
- (2) Most power conference points - The person with the most power conference points (wins + bonus points) will win $150. The power conferences will be identified on the entry sheet for anyone unfamiliar with which conferences are considered power conferences. In 2024, Basket Balls Boy and Sam I Am split this money.
- (3) Lowest winning seed - The person who has the lowest winning seed conference tournament champion wins $150. In 2024, thanks to 6 seeded New Mexico in the Mountain West, 3 people split this pot!
- (4) Closest SEC championship game score - The person with the closest SEC championship game score wins $50. This is typically one of the last conference championship games, taking place on Selection Sunday, so even if you're in last place with no other wins, you will have the opportunity to recoup your $50. In 2024, this was split among 3 people!
As conference tournaments begin and end at different dates between 3/2/25 - 3/16/25, I will post a daily blog and standings update via the link below.
Make sure you save this blog link, subscribe to it, and put it in your favorites, so you're always up to date on the pool updates. Each year I try to send less emails and keep more of the updates online. More details will be sent out during the week of 2/23/25. 🎉
Thank You!
Rick Donegan
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