The second day of the NCAA men’s tournament wiped out the last perfect Leak Herald Sports bracket. For a while, it looked like the women’s tournament was trending the same way, but one person managed to successfully pick all 16 games.
One perfect bracket remains after the first round of the NCAA women’s tournament. It was officially the last bracket standing after No. 10 seed Baylor’s upset of No. 7 Alabama on Saturday afternoon, but needed to pick six more games to remain perfect.
The bracket went chalk with all those games, however, and that turned out to be a wise strategy. No. 4 UCLA’s defeat of No. 13 Sacramento State was the final win it needed.
What did this bracket pick for the future? It has a Final Four of South Carolina, LSU, Connecticut and Iowa, with an All-SEC national championship game of South Carolina defeating LSU 75-61.
It didn’t take long for women’s brackets to get busted on Friday. Only 28.3% of brackets were still perfect after the first two games, which were No. 9 South Florida beating No. 8 Marquette and No. 7 Arizona beating No. 10 West Virginia. By the end of the day, less than 0.1% of brackets were perfect, despite every No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, No. 4 and No. 5 seed surviving.
The big upsets came early on Saturday and devastated nearly every remaining bracket. No. 12 seed FGCU took down No. 5 seed Washington State and No. 12 Toledo knocked off No. 5 Iowa State in the first few games. The first left only 42 perfect brackets, then the Rockets cut it down to only four.
By March Madness standards, it wasn’t the most chaotic first round at all. Every top 4 seed is through to the Sweet Sixteen, with the two 12-5 upsets providing most of the chaos. It just goes to show the sheer mathematical challenge of going 16-for-16 picking games.