SportsLine's 2025 NCAA Tournament optimal bracket produces historic results in dominating performance

SportsLine's optimal bracket for the 2025 NCAA Tournament enters the Final Four on a historic run, ranking in the 99.5th percentile in a major national bracket contest. SportsLine's data team, led by Stephen Oh (@stephenohcbs), already had a long history of producing top-tier bracket picks. The model, which has created upset and an optimal bracket every year since its inception in 2016, has beaten more than 91% of CBS Sports brackets in four of the past six years. It has also called 25 double-digit seed upsets in the first round. 

This year's optimal bracket, however, is poised to be its best ever. Oh worked with data scientists Jacob Fetner and Mackenzie Brooks to produce a masterful bracket on Selection Sunday that nailed pick after pick. 

Among the model's most notable accomplishments in this year's optimal bracket:

• It nailed every Elite Eight team, including No. 3-seed Texas Tech, as well as every Final Four team
• It had a perfect East Region
• It missed just nine picks in the entire 2025 NCAA Tournament thus far
• It called No. 12-seed Colorado State's upset of No. 5 Memphis in the first round
• It was a perfect 4-0 in the critical 8 vs. 9 matchups in the first round 

Oh acknowledged that this year has seen a very 'chalk' bracket play out, but despite several lower-seeded teams making deep runs in recent years, the data pointed to value in backing the higher-seeded teams in many cases this year. 

"Our team emphasized that the No. 1 seeds are all top-10 teams historically and we 'knew' this would be a chalk bracket in the Final Four," Oh said. "But the reason the bracket is as highly-ranked as it is is because we hit on all 8/9 seed winners, had Creighton and BYU going far, faded St. John's because it couldn't shoot."

Now that the Final Four is set, who does the bracket have winning in the semifinal and title games? See the latest Final Four picks here, all from the model that produce an optimal bracket ranked in the 99.5th percentile nationally in a major bracket contest!