After a year without it, March Madness returned in style Friday with a No. 15 seed, a No. 13 seed, a No. 12 seed and a No. 11 seed advancing to the second round of the NCAA tournament.
And with that came the return of “bracket destroyers” – the annual search for a perfect prognosis that inevitably goes wrong and results in the hypothetical – or literal, for some – fragmentation of the brackets.
There were 14.7 million keys entered in the ESPN Challenge Tournament before the start of the NCAA tournament. After only 16 games, only 108 remain without defects.
The first big success came with the impressive victory of No. 15 Oral Roberts over No. 2 Ohio State, with a whopping 13,992,289 brackets (95.2%) with the Buckeyes advancing to the second round. In fact, the Buckeyes were the sixth most chosen team among ESPN’s brackets to eliminate the networks as champions.
For those lucky enough to choose Oral Roberts, many doubled – with 272,122 keys, with the Golden Eagles advancing to Sweet 16.
The traditional 12-by-5 turn came next with Oregon State taking down No. 5 Tennessee. Of all 12 seeds in the ESPN Tournament Challenge, beavers were actually chosen the least (21.5%), below Winthrop (26.8%), UCSB (27.6%) and the 12-seed Georgetown (42) , 7%).
The next big hit for the support group was provided by No. 13 North Texas, which brought down No. 4 Purdue. Only 12.5% of all entries chose Medium Green to advance, and almost half of all keys (49.7%) had Caldeireiros reaching Sweet 16.
The final turn came with Syracuse taking down No. 6 San Diego State, although Tournament Challenge players were not too surprised, as 41.8% of entries chose Syracuse to advance to the second round, the highest percentage among the 11 seeds. For those who chose San Diego State, however, the loss really hurt, as 23.5% of those keys had the Aztecs reaching Sweet 16.
For 108 participants, the search for perfection continues on Saturday.