If you’re a High Point fan, a VCU Ram, or a Troy Trojan, your team didn’t just win a game in the NCAA Tournament — it helped destroy one of the largest bracket pools in history.
And if you bleed Badger red or Carolina blue, the numbers behind your team’s loss might sting even more than the final score.
A record 26.6 million people submitted a March Madness bracket on ESPN this year, up 7% compared to last year’s 24.4 million. At peak, ESPN Tournament Challenge registered more than 766 brackets per second.
According to the NCAA, more than 36 million brackets were submitted across major online games, including the Men’s Bracket Challenge Game, ESPN, CBS, Yahoo, USA Today and Sports Illustrated.
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All those carefully researched picks. All those office pool entry fees. And then the games started.
March Madness Chaos From the Opening Tip
March Madness began on March 19 with No. 8 Ohio State facing off against No. 9 TCU. According to ESPN, 60% of fans chose Ohio State to win on their March Madness bracket — that amounted to 15,913,028 of the 26.6 million brackets.
Ohio State lost, meaning only 40% of brackets remained perfect after the very first game of the tournament.
Before fans could even settle in, another 1,806,017 brackets were ruined when No. 13 Troy lost to No. 4 Nebraska in the second game of the day.
Troy fans who dreamed of a Cinderella run saw that hope end early, but their team’s inclusion in the tournament field — and the nearly two million brackets that were banking on a Nebraska win over them — underscored the Trojans’ presence on the national stage.
The third game brought a smaller bracket shake-up: 772,406 brackets had No. 11 South Florida pulling the upset over No. 6 Louisville, but Louisville held on to win.
High Point Stuns Wisconsin — and Wrecks 7.18 Million Brackets
Then came the moment that will live in mid-major lore for years.
Just four games into the tournament, No. 12 High Point beat No. 5 Wisconsin in the second major upset of the first round. For the Panthers and their community, it was a statement win of massive proportions. For Wisconsin fans and alumni, the data tells a painful story: 7,186,973 brackets had Wisconsin winning that game.
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Let that number sink in. More than seven million people were confident the Badgers would advance. High Point made every single one of them wrong. That is the kind of bracket destruction that puts a mid-major program’s name on the lips of every sports fan in the country, whether they’d heard of High Point before tip-off or not.
After just four games, 25,678,424 of the 26.6 million ESPN brackets were already ruined. That means roughly 96.5% of all brackets on ESPN were busted just a quarter of the way into day one.
And the carnage didn’t stop with High Point’s stunner. Several other results carved through what remained of the nation’s bracket pools:
- No. 11 VCU over No. 6 UNC: The Rams knocked off North Carolina, destroying 311,079 brackets in the process.
- No. 5 Vanderbilt over No. 12 McNeese: McNeese’s upset bid fell short in a loss to Vanderbilt, and 214,500 brackets that had been riding the Cowboys’ underdog magic were wiped out.
- No. 10 Texas A&M over No. 7 St. Mary’s: The Aggies downed St. Mary’s, taking 141,194 brackets with them.
Overall, six of the 16 games in the first round ended in an upset. That included both No. 9 seeds, both No. 11 seeds, a No. 12 seed and a No. 10 seed.
By the end of day one, only 10,754 perfect brackets remained on ESPN, representing only 0.04% of the original 26.6 million.
Across all major platforms tracked by the NCAA, only about 14,000 of the 36 million submitted brackets remained perfect — meaning around 3,000 survived outside of ESPN’s platform.
Chasing the All-Time Perfect Bracket Record
For those 10,754 remaining perfect brackets on ESPN, there’s a long road ahead — and a benchmark waiting at the end of it.
According to the NCAA, the longest verifiable streak of correct picks in an NCAA tournament bracket to start the tournament is 49.
That record was set by Gregg Nigl in 2019. His streak ended when No. 3 Purdue beat No. 2 Tennessee 99-94 in overtime of the second game in the Sweet 16.
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With 10,754 brackets sitting at a perfect 16 for 16 after the first round, the question becomes whether any of them can sustain that run deep enough into the tournament to challenge Nigl’s 49.
