In the world of sports betting, one spectacle continues to stand out as an enormously difficult feat: the perfect March Madness bracket. Over the last thirty years of mens’ collegiate basketball playoffs, fifty million March Madness brackets have been filled out, but none have ever come close to being perfect. But there is a lot more that goes into March Madness than simply the spectacle among fans.
March Madness is a pool of 68 teams in a single-elimination tournament. Before the bracket of 64 teams begins, the First Four play, to decide four of the seeds in the tournament. Following the First Four, each round eliminates half the teams until the NCAA has their Division I basketball champion.
One of the most enticing aspects of March Madness is the upsets, hence the “madness.” This often ruins brackets, but is also what makes March Madness so fun. When a team goes on a run of upsets and is a lower seed, it is referred to as a “Cinderella run” due to its unexpected nature. Two of the most famous Cinderella runs in recent memory include 2018 Loyola Chicago and 2022 Saint Peter’s. In 2018, despite being an 11 seed and not qualifying for the tournament since 1985, Loyola Chicago made it to the Final Four, upsetting seeds that were higher than them. The length of this run was one of the most surprising factors, as such a low seed had only made the Final Four three times prior. Similarly, in 2022, Saint Peter’s made it to the Elite Eight as a 15 seed, the highest that seed had gone ever in the tournament.
This year, most of the Cinderella runs were dispatched early on. Big upsets in the first round included 12-seeded McNeese winning over 5-seeded Clemson, and 11-seeded Drake defeating 6-seeded Missouri. But, this year, the only double-digit seed to make the Sweet 16 was 10-seeded Arkansas, who upset a two-seed in St. John’s and seven-seed Kansas along the way. Unfortunately, no team lower than a six-seed made it to the Elite Eight and the Final Four consists entirely of one-seeds, leading to one of the most straightforward brackets in recent years.
Despite this, after the first two rounds, no perfect brackets remained. The longest a bracket lasted was 42 games, the second-longest verified streak by the NCAA. One of the top teams that remains in the tournament is crowd favorite Duke, led by its projected #1 pick in the NBA draft Cooper Flagg. Another popular pick is Florida, starring Walter Clayton Jr., who put up a masterful performance in the Elite Eight to lead Florida over Texas Tech in a tight win. All number-one seeds have remained in the tournament until the Final Four, and it will be riveting to see how the rest of the tournament plays out over the next couple weeks.
