The hunt for a perfect bracket in this year’s March Madness has come up short once again. The men’s tournament has already seen some major upsets, with 2 and 4 seeds losing on the first day. This caused a large number of brackets to be thrown out when the 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson shocked the top-seeded Boilermakers on Friday night.
According to Jared Shanker, the senior director of digital communications at CBS Sports, only 0.0003% of brackets on their site were perfect after eight early Friday games. By the end of the day, there were no perfect brackets left, with CBS Sports tweeting, “March is for busted brackets.”
CBS Sports reported that 98.7% of their brackets picked Purdue to beat Fairleigh Dickinson, with only 0.4% selecting Fairleigh Dickinson to reach the Sweet 16. Similarly, ESPN’s Tournament Challenge game, which had more than 20 million brackets filled out, saw only 22 perfect brackets remaining on Friday, and none of them survived the weekend.
Upsets from double-digit seeds, such as Princeton, Penn State, and Furman, caused significant damage to many brackets. Only 1.4% of ESPN’s brackets had all three of these teams making it out of the first round, and only 0.1% had them surviving the weekend. The final blow was dealt by Fairleigh Dickinson, which caused the remaining perfect brackets to be thrown out.
A professor from the University of Illinois who runs an analytics website, Sheldon Jacobson, believes that the transfer portal has hurt some power conference schools in the NCAA Tournament. The changes have diminished cohesiveness within some marquee programs, making it easier for lower-seeded teams from mid-major conferences to perform well.
Despite the upsets, Jacobson says that statistically speaking, it’s not that unusual. There’s not much difference between a five, six, or seven seed and a 10, 11, or 12 seed. Jacobson also predicts that at least one of the Final Four teams will come from outside the top five seeds in each region, and it’s pretty much a crapshoot from there.
This year’s March Madness has already seen its fair share of upsets, causing many brackets to be thrown out. However, it’s not uncommon statistically, and there’s still a lot of basketball left to be played. It’ll be interesting to see which teams make it to the Final Four and if any more upsets will occur along the way.
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