And then there was one.
Going into the Sweet 16, there was one perfect bracket left on Monday night for the women’s NCAA Tournament among the millions of entries in the ESPN bracket challenge and in the contests tracked on the NCAA’s official website. There were no perfect brackets remaining on the men’s side.
The NCAA’s official website had 235 perfect women’s brackets at the beginning of the day. That number was trimmed to seven when No. 10 seed Virginia beat No. 2 Iowa in double overtime. There was only one left after No. 6 seed Notre Dame knocked off No. 3 Ohio State.
The quest for a perfect men’s bracket ended on Sunday night when No. 6 seed Tennessee beat No. 3 seed Virginia 79-72 in the 44th game of the tournament — and before No. 9 seed Iowa pulled the biggest stunner of the weekend by knocking off No. 1 seed and defending national champion Florida 73-72.
The day started with two perfect brackets left in the ESPN contest and four on the NCAA’s site, which tracks the ESPN challenge along with six contests run by other outlets. ESPN had 26.5 million entries, and 36 million were tracked by the NCAA.
After a pair of No. 2 seeds eliminated No. 7s on Sunday — Purdue beat Miami 79-69 and Iowa State topped Kentucky 82-63 — ESPN had two intact brackets and the NCAA had three.
When Dylan Darling’s buzzer-beating layup gave No. 5 seed St. John’s a 67-65 win over No. 4 seed Kansas, ESPN had one perfect bracket left.
The odds of going 63-0 in a bracket contest are somewhere between one in 9.2 quintillion (for totally random guesses) or one in 120 billion (semi-educated ones).
