With the Final Four kicking off Saturday, the athletes aren’t the only participants feeling the pressure.

Junior marketing major Chris Cervini is NIU’s top scorer on Facebook’s 2007 NCAA men’s basketball tournament promotion. Cervini has 115 points heading into the weekend.

“It’s pretty surprising,” Cervini said. “It’s not something you expect to happen.”

Of the millions who participate in March Madness pools every spring, there is no one proven method of success. Some painstakingly analyze statistics while others pick winners based on which mascot could cause the most physical harm to the other.

“I paid more attention to basketball prior to the tournament this year,” said Cervini, who has correctly picked 83 percent of his bracket correctly. “I looked at teams with good centers and one or two good guards.”

While Cervini broke down the numbers, Sunny Singh tried a slightly different approach.

“I just picked random stuff,” the freshman accounting major said. Singh ranks fourth at NIU with 113 points. “I tossed up a coin between upsets or no upsets, and I went with no upsets. I got really lucky, because there haven’t been many upsets.”

Alexsandra Robles, a sports management graduate student, had an usual method for making her picks this year. Robles was in Puerto Rico when the brackets were released, so she relayed her picks back to her brother over the phone so he could enter them on Facebook.

“I know it kind of makes me a dork, but this is the best I’ve ever done,” said Robles, who ranks 11th at NIU with 109 points. “If I had it in front of me, I might not have done as well because I would have kept doubting myself.”