Men's NCAA Tournament Challenge early bracket trends and notes

We've spent weeks debating bubble teams, conference champions and bracketology, but now that the 2022 men's NCAA tournament field has been revealed, it's time to sign up and fill out your brackets.

Picking the right Final Four is a difficult task, especially with the depth of quality national championship contenders like Gonzaga, Duke and Kansas. Who are the most popular teams chosen as the public fills out their first brackets? What are the trends for underdogs and upsets so far?

Below are some early 2022 ESPN Tournament Challenge bracket trends as well as a look back at some selected 2021 NCAA tournament results.

53.7% of brackets have a 1-seed winning it all (last season: 67.5%)

Gonzaga: 27.8% (sat at 34.5% in the 4 hours following the bracket release)

Arizona: 12.4% (These two teams accounted for 44.2% of the champion picks through 4 hours and while that number has dipped, they seem to be establishing themselves as the top tier of title picks)

Kansas: 8.2%

Baylor: 5.2%

The most popular non-1-seeds to cut down the nets

Duke: 6.6%

Kentucky: 6.5%

Auburn: 4.3%

Tennessee: 4.2%

Big Ten-sion

Much of the early talk has been about fading the Big 10 as a whole and people seem to be putting their brackets where their mouths are:

Wisconsin: despite having one of the best players in the country and a Big 10 regular season crown, they rank 14th in percentage of champion picks (1.2%)

Illinois: eliminated in the majority of brackets before the Sweet 16 (gone before then in 52.9% of brackets)

Purdue: the least picked 3-seed to reach the Sweet 16 (63%)

Ohio State: the least picked 7-seed to win Round 1 (51.5%)

Seeding is nothing but a number

As noted by Keith Lipscomb: Not only have No. 6 seeds won at least three of the four