March Madness is already exceeding expectations for college basketball enthusiasts.
The first round of the NCAA tournament began on Thursday.
After eight games, the NCAA reported that just less than 2.5% of brackets remained perfect in its own bracket game.
Thursday’s biggest bracket buster was the No. 3 seed Kentucky Wildcats losing to the No. 14 seed Oakland Golden Grizzlies. The final score in that game was 80-76.
According to the NCAA, Oakland’s upset left just over 2,100 perfect brackets standing, which is actually an increase from last year. Less than 1% of brackets remained perfect after eight games last year.
On Thursday, the No. 6 seeds BYU and South Carolina lost to the No. 11 seeds Duquesne and Oregon, as well as the other bracket busters.
Key Facts
- Just over 0.0003% of brackets created through the NCAA’s Capital One March Madness Bracket Challenge remain perfect after just one day, including an upset by 11-seeded Duquesne over 6-seeded Brigham Young University.
- Less than 2,000 of the more than 22 million brackets submitted on ESPN were still unbroken as of Thursday night, while only 116 brackets in Yahoo Fantasy Sports’ challenge remained perfect.
- The Duquesne Dukes won that game 71-67 in a matchup that came down to the wire Thursday, an outcome less than a quarter of contestants in Yahoo Fantasy Sports’ competition selected—less than 5% of those brackets have the Dukes advancing to the Sweet 16.
- Nine-seeded Michigan State also mustered a slight upset in the West region with a 69-51 win over 8-seeded Mississippi State, while in the Midwest, 11-seeded Oregon upset 6-seeded South Carolina by a score of 87-73.
- Later Thursday night, Oakland pulled off one of the biggest shockers in the tournament so far, defeating three-seeded Kentucky as a 14-seed in the South, thanks to a near-record 10 three-pointers from Oakland senior Jack Gohlke—just over 5% of brackets in the NCAA challenge had Oakland winning.
Big Number
$1 million. That’s how much a perfect bracket will win in USA Today Sports’ bracket challenge, while the contestant with the best bracket can still win $25,000 even if they don’t pick every game correctly. The winner of CBS Sports’ bracket challenge will receive tickets to the 2025 NCAA Final Four and $6,000 towards accommodations, while ESPN offers 10 $5,000 prizes.
Surprising Fact
March Madness brackets have never been perfect, and it’s not likely this year will be any different. The odds of correctly selecting the winner of all 67 games in the tournament stand at an abysmal one in 9.2 quintillion if chosen at random, though a contestant with knowledge of college basketball fares significantly better odds, at one in 102.2 billion, according to the NCAA.
Tangent
It took just one day of tournament play for every bracket to bust in last year’s men’s March Madness tournament, following an astonishing first-round upset by 16-seeded Fairleigh Dickinson over 1-seed Purdue.
