The brackets are set. If you haven’t done so already, it’s time to clear your schedule, call in sick to work or school and start making your favorite game-day dish — oh, and grab a pencil and paper.

Whether you’re a college basketball diehard or just a casual participant in your office pool, filling out a March Madness bracket is a civic duty. Here are a few things you can do to maximize your chances of shooting up the leaderboard.

Focus on the later rounds

Too much is made of how many points a bracket earns in the early round. Sure, it’s fun to track, but bracket pools are won and lost at the end of the tournament, and that’s where your focus should be.

Take a pool that starts with 10 points for each Round of 64 game and doubles from there. Player A has a remarkable first round, going 30-2, while Player B struggles, going 17-15. Yet as the tourney progresses, Player A’s Final Four picks get knocked out, while Player B correctly picks three Final Four teams. Guess who’s now 110 points ahead? Hint: Not the person who was bragging after opening weekend.

A good place to start, then, is to pick your champion and your Final Four rather than picking your bracket game-by-game. Get a sense of who you like most in each region, because those teams are going to be doing the bulk of the work.

The cream will likely rise to the top

Which of those top teams will prevail? Well, if history is any indication, it’s going to be a No. 1 seed. Eighteen of the 25 men’s national champions this century were the top seeds in their regions. Those teams are on the top line for a reason.

This year’s men’s top seeds appear stronger than ever. Ken Pomeroy, the famed college basketball data guru, has Duke, Arizona and Michigan as the top three teams, with efficiency ratings of 38.90, 37.66 and 37.59. Those figures represent how much the Blue Devils, Wildcats and Wolverines would be expected to outscore an average Division I team over 100 possessions, and they’re second, third and fourth all-time behind Duke last year (39.33).

The gap between the top teams and the rest, then, seems to be growing. This is not to say the above teams are locks — injuries, troublesome matchups and bad shooting nights happen — but after all four No. 1 seeds reached the Final Four last year, expect at least one or two to be there.

Fill in the rest — and look for potential surprises

OK, so you have that part of your bracket built. You still have 40-something games to pick, and while those games don’t carry the same value, getting them right could be the difference between a top-10 finish and the grand prize.

The 4-vs.-13, 5-vs.-12 and 6-vs.-11 games are all popular upset picks. That’s because teams seeded 4 through 6 are usually solid but weren’t quite at the top of their conference, while seeds 11-13 are mid-majors with strong records. No. 12 seeds are 57-103 all-time vs. 5 seeds (35.6 percent), and No. 11 seeds are 62-98 vs. No. 6 (38.9 percent). Statistically, upsets will happen among this group.

Which teams will pull upsets? That’s the tough part, and it might take some digging. Who’s on a winning streak right now? Who’s faltering? Who has a size advantage or a defense that might cause a higher seed trouble? Consider all of that, but whatever you do …

Don’t overthink it

At the end of the day, a winning bracket needs to be as correct as possible. As is the case in an actual basketball game, style points don’t matter; your score when it’s all said and done does.

What does that mean? For one, don’t force it. If you genuinely don’t think a team is going to win a game, your bracket should reflect that. Picking a team because you “need to throw in an upset” when you don’t actually expect that outcome is how you miss out on points, giving the other players in your pool an advantage.

So look at the patterns, see what might make your bracket stand out and expect a few outcomes to be statistically likely. Just don’t let the outside noise get in the way of what you think will happen on the court.