As I sit here watching Selection Sunday, I keep thinking about who I'm going to pick when filling out my bracket. There are 64 teams in this tournament, and even as a college student it is very unlikely to know enough about all of these teams to make accurate predictions. Let's say you know a lot about 30 of those teams, what information do you use to form the perceptions about the other 34 teams?
*Assume you have a life and don't have much time to conduct any research on any of the teams.*
If someone is generally aware of an University, that is, to claim that they know that it exists, they might pick that school's basketball team to win based on the fact that they've never heard of the opponent. For example, in the match-up between the 3rd seed, Texas A&M, and the 14th seed, Green Bay, you might have heard about Texas A&M as a school in general, yet you might have never heard of Green Bay. Hence, your decision to pick Texas A&M to win might be influenced not only by the seed or by what the experts say, but also by the fact that you've heard of that school, making their victory seem more foreseeable than it may actually be.
It's all about perceptions. In some scenarios, the only associations you can make with a certain University is with the fact that they exist, that they have a basketball program, and that they're basketball program is good (or bad) based on that team's tournament seed. For example, Duke, a 4 seed, has many brand associations across their university. Their biggest association is arguably basketball and they are well-known specifically because of their basketball program. If you knew nothing about UNC Wilmington (a 13 seed), Duke's first-round match-up, the obvious choice might be to pick Duke to win based on the fact that they have a strong association with their basketball program. If UNC Wilmington had been the 4 seed, and Duke had been the 13 seed, one might be more inclined to pick Duke to upset UNC Wilmington based on Duke's strong association with basketball. Just some random food for thought, go Buffs!