The pursuit of the perfect NCAA Tournament bracket continues, but for far fewer people than when Saturday’s second-round games tipped off.
By Saturday evening, after wins by top seeds Duke and Michigan and third-seeded Michigan State, the number of unblemished entries had dropped to 105 in ESPN’s bracket challenge and 133 in the NCAA’s contest. There were more than 25 million entries in each.
Favorites went 16-0 on Friday, and they started 3-0 on Saturday. Duke, picked to win the national championship by 23% of ESPN contestants, dominated No. 9 seed TCU in the second half and won 81-58. Michigan, the third-most popular choice to win the title, dispatched No. 9 seed Saint Louis 95-72. Michigan State beat sixth-seeded Louisville 77-69.
There was also a sharp drop-off in perfect brackets in the women’s tournament Saturday. The day started with 675,000 in the ESPN contest. After 10 games, there were 2,800 left. Two lower seeds won, with No. 10 seed Virginia knocking out No. 7 seed Georgia 82-73 and No. 9 seed Southern California beating No. 8 seed Clemson 71-67. Many more brackets would have been in a shambles had 15th-seeded Fairleigh Dickinson, which was in a one-possession game with No. 2 seed Iowa midway through the fourth quarter, been able to pull an upset. Iowa won 58-48.
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).
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AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness
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