Yes, it’s March Madness time once again. The 64 best teams in men’s college basketball are readying for the always exciting tournament which ends this year with the Final Four in San Antonio, April 5 and 7.

From a personal perspective, at least round one will hold fewer thrills than it has for the last two years, as neither of ‘‘my” teams (alma mater Albany ‘‘Great Danes” and hometown St. Johns ‘‘Red Storm”) made it to the tournament.

Now that the brackets are out, sneak a peek over most anyone’s shoulder over the last few days and you probably had a good chance of catching them filling out their selections in one of the online bracket ‘‘challenges.” There are a multitude of these available and hundreds of thousands fill them out on each site. Just to get half of the games right in the first round, giving you a modest chance at finishing in the top 50 percent of entrants, takes an awful lot of luck combined with knowledge.

Truth be told, over the last 6 years I have been as high as 95 percent (2003) and as low as 29 percent (2006), last year coming in at 82. So despite much studying and moderate following of NCAA basketball, even the experts will tell you that you can play the percentages but some hot 13-seed is almost always going to bust one of your brackets no matter what you do!

There are plenty of people out there explaining each of the four regions and who is going to win them. I have been struck so far with how many of the prognosticators are predicting three or four top seed to make it all the way to San Antonio. I think this is because it’s safe and because there’s no real clear cut favorite right now. It does not seem to be beyond the realm of possibility that only one of the top seeds (UCLA by my reckoning) will end up in the final four.

If you want my advice on bracket picking, look at the RPI rating of each team and pick the higher one, with bonus points for record versus the top 50 and record over the last ten games. You will end up taking the higher seed most times, but then again, the higher seed usually wins (at least in the first two rounds).

Actually the fun part of making tournament selections is trying to figure out which 9-13 seed has a shot at getting to the elite eight or farther. I am discounting any 14 or higher, those 12 teams are 2-46 in first round games over the last four years.

However, as I mentioned earlier, it is not unusual for a 12-seed to upset a five. That has happened five times over the past four years. This year I give Temple a good shot over Michigan St., and maybe Western Kentucky over Drake.

First number one out? My money’s on Kansas, who I don’t think will even make the regional semi-finals. Memphis also has a tough road to follow, with possibly a hot Pittsburgh team waiting in the sweet 16 or Texas or Stanford in the regional finals. This leaves UCLA as my favorite to take the title.