The NCAA “March Madness” basketball tournament has begun, and as college hoops fans across the country have their eyes on the 68 teams playing in this year’s tournament, we’ve also been busy scrutinizing the field.

We, too, have filled out our tournament bracket, but we’ve focused our handicapping not on basketball prowess, but on each school’s skill at helping its poorest students graduate without crushing debt.

Our calculations were based on our Debt by Degrees interactive database which has been updated to include new data for the 2014-2015 school year. You can use Debt by Degrees to analyze how well over 5,000 schools support students from low-income households.

Earning a college degree is a slam dunk way for students to achieve social mobility, leading to higher future income, better health and more family stability. What the data shows is that the choices colleges make about distributing resources can either deepen economic disparities or help upend them.

So who fares well in this tournament?

One might think that helping students achieve social mobility is something that only wealthy schools with large endowments can do — and indeed Princeton is the national champion in our bracket. But there are plenty of well-to-do schools that are stingy when it comes to aid for poor students. And runner-up UC Davis presents a more nuanced picture: It’s not just about the total amount of cash a school has, but how it’s spent.

The California state schools in general are relatively well-funded, and vigorously recruit low-income students, so it’s not a surprise that UC Davis ranks 6th nationally among its peer schools in helping a poor student “become a rich adult,” according to a recent analysis.

Depending on where your allegiances lie, you may be stunned with some opening round upsets, such as #16 UC Davis’ shutout of #1 Kansas — meaning they win on all five of our criteria — or the Norse of #15 Northern Kentucky eking out a win over their more famous cross-state opponent, #2 Kentucky.

Our simulated tournament brings us to an intriguing Final Four, which includes 12th seed Princeton, 16th seed UC Davis making a Cinderella run, and a surprising appearance by perennial tournament contenders (and bitter rivals) Duke and North Carolina. (A run of this bracket based on last year's Debt by Degrees data even ended in a Duke-UNC championship game.)

Catholic-affiliated universities are well-represented and generally highly seeded in the tournament — but none progress beyond our second round. Gonzaga, Villanova, Notre Dame, Creighton, Dayton, Saint Mary’s, Marquette, Xavier, Providence, and Mount Saint Mary’s all lose in their opening game. Iona and Seton Hall make it out of the first round, only to fall to Rhode Island and North Carolina, respectively. As we reported in 2015, these universities tend to enroll fewer low-income students, and smaller Catholic universities (with smaller endowments) tend to saddle low-income graduates with more debt — two of the factors in our head-to-head scoring system.

There are a few important caveats to bear in mind: Although we simulate results and crown a champion based on low-income student support, our bracket is originally seeded by schools’ basketball performance during the current season — sadly leaving out teams like SUNY-Albany, which beats several Sweet 16 teams using our criteria, even if their basketball team went a mediocre 21-13 this year.

Also, winning our bracket doesn’t mean a school is the best in the field. A team’s chances in any tournament are affected by the luck of the draw. Debt by Degrees features more complete leaderboards for several of our criteria on its homepage.