From No. 13 seed Furman beating fourth-seeded Virginia to No. 15 Princeton defeating second-seeded Arizona, most NCAA Tournament brackets were busted Thursday before the sun went down.
The NCAA March Madness Twitter account posted midway through the first round that only .065% of brackets remained perfect.
The number of perfect brackets gets smaller and smaller... 👀#MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/3LTP9raPf1
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) March 16, 2023
Numbers were similar elsewhere.
In ESPN’s Tournament Challenge bracket game, 18,078 perfect brackets remained — and more than 20 million had suffered at least one loss.
Furman received a decent amount of support. The Paladins were picked to win their opener on 18.2% of brackets. Only 6.6% picked Princeton to beat Arizona, and the Wildcats going down did tremendous damage to many brackets. They were picked in 4.9% of brackets to cut down the nets at the national championship game.
Arizona was a popular pick at CBS Sports too, appearing on 96.9% of brackets win its opener, 84.9% to make the Sweet 16, 55.2% to make the Elite Eight, 21.5% to reach the Final Four and 5% to win it all.