ESPN has been tracking the amount of perfect brackets remaining it the company’s annual Tournament Challenge, and there are zero perfect brackets left following Purdue’s stunning loss to Fairleigh Dickinson.
Just over 20 million brackets (20,056,273, to be exact) were submitted this year. The first two games of the tournament, Maryland-West Virginia and Furman-Virginia, nearly wiped out the field. 10,272,984 brackets took their first loss with West Virginia, and another 8,128,617 fell from the unblemished with Virginia’s loss.
The third game wiped out another chunk, with Missouri’s victory over Utah State taking 816,812 out of the running. The final game of the early window, a Kansas blowout win over Howard, eliminated 81,574.
After just one window of games, 756,286 brackets were left perfect. That’s 3.77% of all brackets submitted.
The second window marked another bloodbath. Alabama’s thumping of Texas A&M Corpus Christi took out 37,437 intrepid pickers. San Diego State’s victory over Charleston eliminated another 252,619. Princeton’s shocking win over Arizona pared the field by 431,308. The Arkansas victory over Illinois ended the daytime slate on day one, and took another 16,844 out of the running.
With two windows completed, ESPN was down to only 18,078 perfect brackets. That is less than a tenth of a percent (0.09%) of all brackets entered.
Brackets continued to get picked off as Thursday and Friday went on. By the time UConn put the finishing touches on Iona Friday afternoon, ESPN was down to 22 perfect brackets.
…and then Fairleigh Dickinson upset Purdue and wiped out the rest of the brackets. It only took 25 games to completely break more than 20 million brackets. Now *that* is impressive.
CBS also has zero perfect brackets left following Purdue’s loss.
March is for busted brackets pic.twitter.com/W3ANyu4Dmt
— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) March 18, 2023
[ESPN]
