The Kansas Jayhawks go wild after their 2008 NCAA National Championship win over Memphis at the Alamodome in San Antonio.

Now that March Madness is upon us, millions of people are jumping into the NCAA Tournament pool.

And you’re wondering how to swim.

To help, we’ve assembled a three-member panel of practiced prognosticators, all promising to have the sure-fire approach for filling in each of the 129 lines — or not — that make up a bona fide NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament bracket, aka “pool.”

So pick a predictor, follow her advice and, if you’re lucky, reap the rewards and adulation that follow.

Bonnie Lowe

Job: Banker, chairwoman of the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce

Pool connection: Served as a Lawrence city commissioner in approving construction of the Lawrence Outdoor Aquatic Center, 727 Ky.

Approach: Lowe, who played basketball in college at Fort Hays State University, is too much of a competitor to subscribe to some of the less-scientific methods of pool-filling.

“What I don’t do is a bracket based on colors and mascots,” she says. “I’m much too analytic for that.”

Instead, Lowe does what any high-achieving, numbers-crunching sports-loving winner must do: homework.

Lowe listens to media analysts — “Jay Bilas is my favorite,” she says, “even though he picked K-State to beat KU” — while watching plenty of hoops herself, picking up insights throughout the season but particularly as March arrives.

“I look at who’s playing well at the end of the season, instead of RPI ratings or even their (overall) records,” she says.

Lowe also considers injuries and how they might affect her picks.

“It’s not a perfect system, but I’ve won several times,” she says.

Track record: “I made out like a rock star last year,” she says. “I had all four in the Final Four … and the whole Sweet 16.”

Advice: “If it’s a coin toss, if one team doesn’t stand out, pick the worse-seeded team. If I’m going to well in a pool, I hedge against the others … and hope for some upsets.”

Casey Toomay

Job: Budget manager and interim transit administrator, city of Lawrence

Pool connection: None, but her job running the Lawrence Transit System leaves her with plenty of room to welcome people onto the KU bandwagon.

Approach: “Here’s what I do: I always take KU to go one round further than I really think they will go, out of pure loyalty. If they’re not going to go all the way, I’m not going to pick them. They don’t make the Final Four in my bracket every year.”

Toomay also likes to “pretend” she knows a lot about conferences considered to be strong for the year, such as the ACC. That’s worth a few picks.

“I always use one 12-beats-a-5,” she says. “Then I throw in a little peppering of ‘A Terrapin always beats a Snake,’ or some other silly mascot thing. After everything else, I fall back on which colors I like the best.”

Other guidelines: “If KU has beaten the team in recent memory, I usually would not pick that team. And if a team has beaten us — ever — then I could pick them. Arizona? I always pick them. Unless they’re playing us.”

Toomay’s most important rule: “I always fill out more than one bracket. I have one that’s my serious one, and one that’s more silly.”

Track record: Mixed. Usually her heart that bleeds crimson-and-blue gets in the way of a bracket that produces victory. “I am torn between my loyalty and my desire to be a winner.”

Advice: “The best way to fill out a bracket is you always have to have a 12-beats-a-5, and you have to respect the fact that there’s going to be a Cinderella,” she says. “It’s up to you to figure out who that’s going to be. You can’t take all four No. 1 seeds to the Final Four. That’s not respecting the bracket.”

Even though that’s exactly how the bracket ended up this past year, in San Antonio.

“I don’t care,” Toomay says. “You should not do that. It’s no fun. What’s the point?”

Shirley Martin-Smith

Job: Owner, Martin-Smith Personnel Services and Adecco Personnel

Pool connection: None, really.

Approach: Martin-Smith succeeds in the pool by not filling one up.

“Don’t fill ’em out,” she says. “It’s too much.”

Instead, Martin-Smith opts to approach her bracket on a game-by-game basis. Better to let the winners come to her.

She likes to look at the bracket before the first round of games, and perhaps pick a few winners — usually teams that have been on a roll, and are riding some momentum heading into the tournament.

Then, as the tournament field shrinks to 32, then 16 and on and on, Martin-Smith pays attention to the so-called “experts” as they discuss each club’s approach, their motivations, their backgrounds.

“By then it’s about the kids themselves,” she says. “They sort of have a magic about them. You just know they’re going to do it.”

Such divinations can’t emerge until the tournament’s under way and on a roll, she says, so there’s no sense bothering to pick teams that don’t carry that elusive, “special” quality.

“My family, the grandkids, they fill in every box and they’re wrong half the time,” she says. “Or more.”

Track record: “I was very successful last year,” she says, of her selective, round-by-round approach. “It was just a gut instinct.”

Advice: Fun is still key. “Pick your team at the beginning of the day and hold onto them, no matter what,” she says.