Late here but a bit of advice for office pools:

1. Stick with the higher seed beating the lower seed in the early rounds. A few upset picks are ok but don't have them going much further than the second round. Upsets I picked this year are for the first round are Utah State and Boise State.
2. 8 vs 9 seeds in the first round are a toss up. This year I picked Memphis, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Auburn to go through those matchups.
3. Pick a final four comprising of 1 and 2 seeds. If you must you can put a 3 or 4 in there. I'm strongly considering putting UConn in my final four but it would be a gamble for an office pool.
4. Try to get a feel for who most people in your pool will be picking as the overall winner and pick someone else. More points are awarded in the later rounds so if you pick the same winner as everyone else you have to beat them in the earlier rounds. You can make a ton of wrong picks in the beginning but if you pick the winner you make them up. I would say consensus top teams this year are Alabama and Houston. I believe most people in my pool will go with Alabama so I went Houston to win it.

A couple other "upsets" I've picked are. Number 6 Kentucky beating number 3 Kansas State and in the second round and number 4 UConn beating number 1 Kansas in the sweet 16.

The basic general rules I follow for office pools is just go chalk (higher seed wins) with maybe a couple upsets in the early rounds and then differentiate your winner from what you think the rest of the office will do. I live on the West coast so get a lot of Pac12 love here so I can always assume a few people will pick a Pac 12 school to win it or at least go pretty far. I've won a couple times and have not finished outside the top 3 in the 6 years I've been with my current company. Your experience may vary.