2016 NCAA Tournament: Bracket, Preview, Breakdown & Predictions

Mar 12, 2016; Washington, DC, USA; North Carolina Tar Heels guard Marcus Paige (5) and teammates celebrate on the court after deating Virginia Cavaliers in the championship game of the ACC conference tournament 61-57 at Verizon Center. Mandatory Credit: Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports
Mar 12, 2016; Washington, DC, USA; North Carolina Tar Heels guard Marcus Paige (5) and teammates celebrate on the court after deating Virginia Cavaliers in the championship game of the ACC conference tournament 61-57 at Verizon Center. Mandatory Credit: Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports
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The field for the 2016 NCAA tournament has been set, so it’s time to break this thing down. A complete preview, region by region and predicting every game.


Mar 12, 2016; Washington, DC, USA; North Carolina Tar Heels guard Marcus Paige (5) and teammates celebrate on the court after deating Virginia Cavaliers in the championship game of the ACC conference tournament 61-57 at Verizon Center. Mandatory Credit: Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports
Mar 12, 2016; Washington, DC, USA; North Carolina Tar Heels guard Marcus Paige (5) and teammates celebrate on the court after deating Virginia Cavaliers in the championship game of the ACC conference tournament 61-57 at Verizon Center. Mandatory Credit: Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports

The 2016 NCAA tournament field has been set.

Whether or not the field is correct is up for debate, as it is every year — Monmouth got hosed — but the bracket has been completed. Here’s the FanSided bracket for you to print out and make your own predictions.

With the field set, we can now dive into this thing feet first and start breaking down each region, each game and each team.

The problem with this season is that while there was so much parity and a lot of these four or five seeds appear to be Final Four contenders but also incredibly vulnerable, there’s a lot of mid-majors that are in the field that, depending on who you ask, shouldn’t be in the field but got hot and won their tournament.

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That being said, there’s a lot of mystery around some of these games, and everybody’s looking for the upset picks, so allow me to help you out.

Here’s a region-by-region, game-by-game, team-by-team breakdown of the 2016 NCAA tournament.

Dig in!

A quick note on the point differentials: if the prediction is a team winning between one and six points means it’s a low confidence pick, seven to 10 points is pretty confident and anything above 10 is high confidence. 

Next: South Region