March Madness Sweet 16 is in full swing. It is a tournament that happens every year in men's college basketball where there is a full bracket of 64 teams that whittles down to 32, 16, 8, 4, and then a championship game. A popular challenge for fans is filling out a bracket, where you need to guess who will win games to make it to the championship.
Filling out a perfect bracket is a lot harder than it may seem because there's always a chance that the better team doesn't play up to the potential they should be playing at.
The chance of a perfect bracket is 1 in 9.2 quintillion, and no one has ever finished the tournament with a perfect bracket. The farthest a bracket has been perfect for was in 2019. The bracket made it two games into the Sweet 16 after 3rd ranked Purdue beat 2nd ranked Tennessee in an overtime thriller.
After questioning students and teachers in our school, we found that they all had almost the same answer when it came to having a perfect bracket. All of their brackets were out on the first day.
This year, the top choices to win are the Duke Blue Devils, with 30.97% of people worldwide picking them. The second closest are the Florida Gators with 17.51%, and the 3rd most picked champions are the Auburn Tigers with 8.85%.
Most of the people we questioned are in that 30.97%. Austin Remster, Kesley Reed, Leo Schrader, and Connor Goff all chose Duke to win. Mr. Kelley picked Florida to win, Mr. Ferguson chose Houston, and Mr. Page chose St. John’s.
Almost every year, there is a Cinderella team, or a team that is ranked a high seed but comes out and unexpectedly wins some games against low-seeded teams. This year, there were many different choices for a Cinderella team.
Kelley had Colorado St., who went on to beat Memphis in the first round 78-70. They then lost to Maryland in the round of 32 by a buzzer beater. Reed had VCU, which didn't go in her favor as they lost to BYU 71-80 in the first round.
Goff’s first round choice, Mcneese, beat Clemson 69-67 and then lost to Purdue 62-76, Page’s North Carolina lost to Ole Miss 64-71. Ferguson thought St. Mary's would make a run but they lost in the round of 32 to Alabama 66-80.
Rather than people picking a Cinderella team, some people just pick a big upset or two. Some big upsets that were picked were McNeese to upset Clemson, chosen by Kelley, Page, Ferguson, and Goff. Another upset a lot of people had was Drake over Missouri, which worked as Drake won 67-57. Reed and Remster picked them.
With no more perfect brackets going into the Sweet 16, anything can happen.