Can your NCAA March madness bracket beat our Legal Services vice president’s  dog?

Illinois REALTORS® Betsy Urbance passed on that her daughter was trying an interesting experiment by using the family Maltese Shih-Tzu mix to pick teams to fill an NCAA tournament bracket.

Urbance’s daughter, Annie, a student at Springfield’s Lincoln Land Community College, used a taste test to predict the winners of all 63 games in the tournament, which kicks off Thursday. She enlisted the willing services of Louie to predict a Final Four matchup of Kansas State, Oklahoma, Gonzaga and Purdue.

And the ultimate winner according to Louie?  Purdue will knock off Gonzaga on April 2 for the championship.

For each game, Annie placed two dog treats behind a door. If Louie chose to eat kibble “A” first, then the top team in the matchup was selected on the sheet. If Louie chose kibble “B” first, then the bottom team was selected. (Louie eats both treats for each game, because, well why not?)

Louie picks Purdue vs. Gonzaga

After each “prediction,” the test was reset for another game. The test was repeated until an entire bracket was filled with predictions and Louie was full of kibble.

“I think this bracket is pretty good,” says Betsy, who favors Missouri to win the tournament. “But I think Louie may have messed up by picking Oklahoma. They just didn’t play well at the end of the regular season.” (Sorry, Oklahoma fans!)

Betsy says Louie hasn’t tried this method of picking games before, but since it’s all in good fun it will be interesting to see how this experiment compares with the choices of friends and other family members. Betsy fully expects Louie to fare better than her in the office pool.

What’s your favorite way to pick?

REALTORS®, tell us what’s the best or most creative method you’ve ever used to pick winners.