By The Associated Press undefined
Well, that’s that.
No perfect NCAA Tournament brackets remained among the millions of entries in the ESPN bracket challenge and in the contests tracked on the NCAA’s official website.
The end came Sunday night when No. 6 seed Tennessee beat No. 3 seed Virginia 79-72 in the 44th game of the tournament — and before No. 9 seed Iowa pulled the biggest stunner of the weekend by knocking off No. 1 seed and defending national champion Florida 73-72.
The day started with two perfect brackets left in the ESPN contest and four on the NCAA’s site, which tracks the ESPN challenge along with six contests run by other outlets. ESPN had 26.5 million entries, and 36 million were tracked by the NCAA.
After a pair of No. 2 seeds eliminated No. 7s Sunday — Purdue beat Miami 79-69 and Iowa State topped Kentucky 82-63 — ESPN had two intact brackets and the NCAA had three.
When Dylan Darling’s buzzer-beating layup gave No. 5 seed St. John’s a 67-65 win over No. 4 seed Kansas, ESPN had one perfect bracket left.
The number of perfect brackets in the women’s tournament dropped to 166 in the ESPN contest and 400 on the NCAA website after higher seeds won the first six games Sunday.
Four of the games were decided by fewer than 10 points, and the other four were blowouts decided by at least 23 points. Minnesota beat Mississippi 65-63 on a last-second shot, North Carolina got past Maryland 74-66 and Oklahoma defeated Michigan State 77-71 in 4 vs. 5 matchups. No. 1 seed Texas and No. 2 seed LSU hit triple digits, with the Longhorns routing No. 8 seed Oregon 100-58 and the Tigers mauling No. 7 seed Texas Tech 101-47.
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