Well, it was fun while it lasted. No perfect men’s March Madness brackets left after Tennessee win

By Canadian Press on March 22, 2026.

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.

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 279 in the ESPN contest and less than 400 on the NCAA website after higher seeds won the first six games Sunday.

The closest women’s games were 4-vs.-5 matchups. Minnesota beat Mississippi 65-63 on a last-second shot and North Carolina got past Maryland 74-66. The other four games were blowouts decided by no fewer than 23 points. 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).

___

AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness

The Associated Press

15
-14