Less than 1% of March Madness brackets remain perfect after first day
Fewer than 1% of NCAA Tournament brackets were still perfect after Thursday’s 16-game slate, according to several services where fans attempt the all-but-impossible task of predicting every March Madness game correctly — or, barring that, win their office pools.
ESPN’s tracker listed 25,802 perfect brackets remaining out of more than 24 million filled out on its site following the final game of the day, Texas Tech’s win over UNC-Wilmington.
The NCAA said 0.0938% of more than 34 million brackets were still perfect.
The numbers were similar at CBS Sports, where 0.09% of brackets were unblemished following the first day of action.
Yahoo Sports said 99.9% of its brackets had fallen short of perfection after 11th-seeded Drake beat No. 6 seed Missouri.
Earlier Thursday, about 6.6 million brackets were busted on ESPN when No. 12 seed McNeese beat No. 5 seed Clemson 69-67.
Creighton — which saw a boost in this category because it played the first game of the day — was listed as ESPN’s top bracket buster after its 89-75 win over Louisville. There were 13,339,089 ESPN brackets busted by that game.
On the other end of the spectrum, ESPN reported that every pick was wrong on 30 of its brackets — a nearly impossible feat in its own right even if a contestant were trying to pick all losers.