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Brackets are back, baby.

And this year’s NCAA Tournament is going to be extra-mad here in the Bay, with the West Region’s Sweet 16 and Elite 8 games coming to Chase Center March 27-29. The West’s top four seeds are Florida, St. John’s, Texas Tech, and Maryland, but there’s always the chance we’ll be rolling out the red carpet for a Cinderella story.

To celebrate the return of the most thrilling three weeks in sports, The Standard is running a free bracket pool. The prize is a one-year membership — and if the winner is already a member, it can be banked for next year’s renewal or transferred to a family member or friend.

To join, visit our PickHoops pool site, enter password “standard2025,” and make those winning picks.

Our sportswriters Tim Kawakami, David Lombardi, and John Shea and sports editor Brady McCollough have included their brackets and the rationale behind them — however flawed — below. Feel free to mine our wisdom — or ignore us entirely. Happy bracketing!

March is for old, battle-tested coaches and SEC dominance. That’s how I got to St. John’s, Michigan State (two for the old-coach category), Tennessee, and Alabama (the SEC picks — and Tennessee, with 70-year-old Rick Barnes, actually qualifies in both categories!) as my Final Four. I’ll just say it: Rick Pitino and Tom Izzo should get long runs in this tournament — for entertainment value and to cap off the master-class septuagenarian seasons they’ve pulled off. 

Meanwhile, I ended up with Alabama as my title pick not necessarily because I think the Tide is the best team or Nate Oats is the best tournament coach. I’m picking Alabama as a hot No. 2 seed because I like the matchup against East No. 1 Duke and because I think Mark Sears is the kind of point guard who can steal a big game or two. Also, I decided early on to pick an SEC team to win it all because 14 conference teams made the tournament — that’s 20% of the 68-team field. Here’s a stat: Alabama’s last 13 games were against tournament teams.

I kind of surprised myself when I realized I didn’t have a 1 seed in the Final Four. That probably isn’t going to look great in a few weekends. But I’m worried about Duke if Cooper Flagg is limited, I think Houston’s style is vulnerable in one-and-done moments, and I just had to go with Izzo over Auburn’s Bruce Pearl.

My most dangerous snub is Florida — analytically a good match for last year’s monster UConn team — but guess what, I just went ahead and put down this year’s much-less-dominant No. 8 seed UConn to beat the Gators in the second round. What the heck.

It’s no fun picking the favorites all the way through the bracket. Plus, at least for this exercise, there’s no money in it. So have some fun. Every March brings upsets. So here we go. No. 1 Auburn? Upset by No. 5 Michigan. No. 1 Florida? Upset by No. 2 St. John’s. No. 1 Duke? Upset by No. 4 Arizona. No. 1 Houston? Upset by No. 6 Illinois.

A Final Four of Michigan, St. John’s, Arizona and Illinois, a championship game featuring St. John’s and Alabama and a national championship won by … St. John’s? Why? The better question is, why not?

Just once in the past 14 tournaments did all four No. 1 seeds reach the Elite Eight, and only once in history did all four No. 1s reach the Final Four. With that in mind, picking all favorites means picking losers. So it’s an educated guessing game, or better yet, an uneducated guessing game that generally works best.

Let’s roll the dice on a team, St. John’s, that went 30-4, with the four losses coming by a combined seven points. Coach Rick Pitino is taking his sixth different school to the tourney and trying to bring the Red Storm to the Final Four for the first time since Chris Mullin put on a shooting exhibition in 1985 — at least until St. John’s fell to Patrick Ewing and Georgetown in a semifinal game. It’s St. John’s turn.

I too often fill out my bracket with my heart leading my head — particularly when my alma mater, Michigan, happens to have a team with a shot at the crown. Given that the Wolverines just won the Big Ten Tournament title, knocking off NCAA Tournament top-4 seeds Purdue, Maryland, and Wisconsin, it wouldn’t be that far-fetched for me to ride the homer-pick train yet again. But instead, I went for another version of emotional bracketing — the hedge.

Michigan State is the No. 2 seed in the South Region and would be Michigan’s presumptive Elite 8 opponent. The Spartans beat the Wolverines twice in the regular season, and neither game was very close. Sure, beating the same team three times in a season is tough to pull off, but the fact that I have already been thinking about Tom Izzo’s squad as a legit contender to cut down the nets made the hedge play necessary.

Now, if the Spartans win their first national title since 2000, I’ll be able to get something out of it in my bracket at least. And it’s certainly time that the Big Ten end its 25-year championship drought. Doing it in a year in which everyone thinks the SEC is the most competitive league in the history of the sport would sure be funny.

I’ll be honest: Covering the 49ers is a year-round job, so I haven’t had the time to watch a second of college basketball this year. As my wife, Margo, (often bitterly) points out: “There is no offseason.”

So thanks to the NFL’s dramatic, never-ending news cycle, my March Madness bracket is a big, uneducated guess — or 63 guesses, to be more specific. Neither Fresno State (the team I grew up closest to) nor Stanford (my alma mater) made the tournament, so I went ahead and picked Auburn. That’s where Margo went to school. Maybe the Tigers, the tournament’s No. 1 overall seed, can pull it off over the coming weeks and give our house a brief respite from football.

You’re welcome, honey.