Follow live coverage of South Carolina, NC State and Iowa, UConn in women’s Final Four today
Bracket season is finally upon us. It’s that time of year when we all put on our thinking caps and attempt to crack an unbreakable code by guessing how the field will shake out. While perfection is next to unobtainable, that’s hardly the goal here. The real glory is in bragging rights over your friends, family and co-workers in your bracket pools.
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Here at The Athletic, we’re covering brackets from multiple angles, with plenty of analysis and expert breakdowns to help you fill out your brackets. But if you’ve clicked this link it means you want help on something else: What to call your bracket.
Congratulations, we’ve got you covered. In fact, in honor of the 68 teams in the field for each tournament (men’s and women’s), we’ve concocted 68 names to choose from for your bracket pool entry.
This way, even if you lose to Cheryl from H.R. who just built a bracket based on her favorite mascots, you can walk away proud, knowing you at least had a better bracket name.
68 bracket pool entry names
We’ll start with a general appetizer for those who don’t have a team in the tournament or who don’t want to tie their bracket to any one player, coach or team. These bracket names are for fans of movies.
- There Will Be Blue Bloods
- Bracket to the Future
- The Ides of March Madness
Name-related puns are a staple in the bracket name game. Fortunately for us, the field is top-heavy with players that fit the bill, especially Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, LSU’s Angel Reese, Kentucky’s Reed Sheppard and Tennessee’s Dalton Knecht. It’s likely that this will be the last March Madness we’ll see these players as Clark, Sheppard and Knect are destined for the WNBA and NBA, while Reese is likely to declare her intentions to go pro as well. So let’s take advantage while we can.
- Caitlin Clark Kent
- Reese’s Pieces
- Touched by an Angel
- Angels on the Hardcourt
- Reed ‘em and Weep
- Reed the Defense
- Reed My Picks
- Sheppard’s Pie
- Sheppard’s Flock
- I’m a Sheppard, Not a Sheep
- Let’s Knecht
- Final (Knecht) Four
- Knecht & Collect
- Knecht the Dots
We could honestly fill this list with bracket names for just these top stars, but the value would wane after a while, and we’ve got so much more to cover.
Let’s take a stroll through more of the top players in the women’s tournament. This year’s field is studded with established and rising stars, like USC’s JuJu Watkins, Stanford’s Cameron Brink, Utah’s Alissa Pili, UT’s Rori Harmon, South Carolina’s Kamilla Cardoso, LSU’s Aneesah Morrow, Virginia Tech’s Georgia Amoore, Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo, UCLA’s Lauren Betts, LSU’s Last-Tear Poa and Syracuse’s Dyaisha Fair. They’re not just great players; they also have very pun-able names.
- On the Brink (of Victory)
- Good JuJu
- Pistol Pili
- Hear Me Rori
- Counting Cardoso
- Gimme S’Amoore
- toMORROW and toMORROW and toMORROW
- See You toMORROW
- All Betts Are Off
- Hidalgo’s Hoops
- Dry Your Last-Tear
- Fair Play
- Fair Game
- Fair Betts
- All’s Fair in Love and War
On the men’s side, UConn’s Stephon Castle, Iowa’s Payton Sandfort, and Kentucky’s Rob Dillingham are primed to make some noise this tourney season. You can help them get a jump on becoming household names by topping your bracket with their moniker, with some of the options below featuring multiple in one.
- Stephon Castle in the Clouds
- Stephon Castle of Three Dragons
- The Man in the High Stephon Castle
- The Last Stephon Castle
- Stephon Castles Made of Payton Sandfort Fall Into the Sea Eventually
- Line in the Sandfort
- Look Out For Quick-Sandfort
- Sky Above, Sandfort Below, Peace Within
- Payton it Forward
- Payton the Piper
- Payton Through the Nose
- If I Lose, I’m Not Payton My Rent
- Dillingham & Cheese
- You’re No Dillingham Sandwich
- Honey Glazed Dillingham
You might be thinking we are close to hitting bedrock with the name puns, but we’re just getting warmed up. Marquette’s big man Oso Ighodaro has a name that is oh-so perfect for this exercise, as does UConn center Donovan Clingan.
- My Bracket is Oso Good
- Oso Beautiful, Oso Nice
- I’m Oso Cool
- Oso You Do Think You’re Pretty?
- Stage 5 Clingan
- The Clingan Way
After dedicating the last 58 picks to just seven players, let’s pepper in some representation for some of the big dance’s other big names: Purdue center Zach Edey, UNC forward Armando Bacot, UConn guard Tristen Newton, Texas guard Brock Cunningham, and Duke guard Kyle Filipowski.
- Zach & the Beanstalk
- Three Hots & a Bacot
- Tristen Newton’s Law of Physics
- For Those About to Brock (Cunningham)
- Filipowski Flopped
We can’t wrap things up without including some coaches, so (snubbed by the committee or not) here are 10 for the road. On the men’s side, we’ve got Seton Hall’s Shaheen Holloway, Kentucky’s John Calipari, Providence’s Kim English, Marquette’s Shaka Smart and Creighton’s Greg McDermott. On the women’s side, we’ve got South Carolina’s Dawn Staley, LSU’s Kim Mulkey, UConn’s Geno Auriemma and Iowa’s Lisa Bluder.
- My Way Or the Shaheen Holloway
- The Hungry Calipari
- The Kim English Patient
- Shaka Smart & Awe
- All McDermott & Bothered
- At a Staleymate
- Kim’sPossible Repeat
- Mulkey Waters Ahead
- Geno 911!
- Varsity Bluders
Good luck, and may the odds be in your favor.
More NCAA Tournament Coverage
- NCAA Tournament Midwest Region analysis: Can Purdue bounce back from last year’s embarrassing upset?
- NCAA Tournament South Region analysis: Is Houston primed to return to Final Four?
- NCAA Tournament East Region analysis: Can UConn emerge and repeat as champions?
(Photo of Reed Sheppard: Andy Lyons / Getty Images)
Keff Ciardello is a freelance correspondent for The Athletic covering sports betting. His work has been featured in the Austin American-Statesman, the San Antonio Express-News, Rivals and Athlon Sports. He is a graduate of Texas State University and resides in San Marcos, TX. Follow Keff on Twitter @Keff_C
