We’ve started tracking perfect brackets going back to 2014 in the men’s tournament. Each March, we hope to see history made and see a bracket go 63 for 63 in picking the winner of each March Madness game.
The odds of that happening are not great. One in 9.2 quintillion, in fact.
We believe the longest perfect start for the men’s tournament is 49 games, when Gregg Nigl of Columbus, Ohio, went 49 for 49 to start the 2019 men’s tournament. That means Nigl picked every single game right through the first weekend, when only 16 teams remained. Only when Purdue beat Tennessee in the Sweet 16 did the run end.
Here are the last stands from other years:
2024
No 15 or 16 seeds won a game this year, but No. 14 Oakland, No. 13 Yale, No. 12 James Madison and THREE No. 11 seeds did. That all meant the final perfect bracket busted on Game 31 as No. 8 Utah State defeated No. 9 TCU. The women’s run lasted until an impressive Game 51, when No. 3 NC State beat No. 2 Stanford.
2023
The perfect men’s bracket went out early on Game 25 when No. 16 Fairleigh Dickinson stunned No. 1 Purdue, following 2018 UMBC as the only 16 seed to beat a No. 1 in men’s tournament history. For women’s, No. 8 Ole Miss’ upset of No. 1 Stanford on the 40th game ended the run.
2022
The perfect men’s brackets lasted to game No. 28, just like in 2021. No. 15 Saint Peter’s upset No. 2 Kentucky, giving the tournament its second consecutive season of a 15-over-2 stunner. On the women’s side, the ESPN bracket “Nathan B!!!” got the first 35 right but reached its end when No. 2 Texas beat No. 7 Utah.
2021
Perfect brackets lasted through 28 games, a much shorter run than in 2019 with Nigl’s 49. No. 15 Oral Roberts’ upset of No. 2 Ohio State decimated brackets, as did other upsets by No. 12 Oregon State and No. 13 North Texas. After the first day, the remaining 100+ perfect brackets shrunk down from there, hitting zero when No. 10 Maryland beat No. 7 UConn.
2019
As mentioned above, we believe this year holds the current record of 49, lasting into the Sweet 16.
2018
No perfect NCAA bracket lasted through the first round on Friday night, thanks to the historic 16-1 upset of UMBC over Virginia. Of the millions of brackets we tracked, 25 were perfect through the first 28 games of the tournament, but UMBC’s win in game No. 29 knocked all of them out.
2017
We saw an incredible 39 games picked to start the tournament, a number that was the highest recorded until 2019. The record-setting bracket, entered in Yahoo’s bracket game, was the only bracket to make it past 37 games unscathed, and managed to reach 39 straight correct picks before Iowa State fell short of a comeback against Purdue and handed the bracket its first loss of the tournament.
2016
The longest anyone went this year was 25 games. With Stephen F. Austin’s win over West Virginia on Friday night, the last remaining perfect NCAA tournament bracket busted. A 15-2 upset (Middle Tennessee over Michigan State) made this a tough year for brackets.
2015
This was another top year, as one bracket in the ESPN online bracket game picked the first 34 games correctly, according to a story by ESPN senior writer Darren Rovell. ESPN said in 2016 that its 2015 bracket was the best start to a tournament it had on record in 18 years of its game.
2014 (and before)
Before 2017, the longest perfect bracket streak tracked was 36, according to Yahoo! Sports. In 2014, Brad Binder went 36 for 36 to start the tournament. Yahoo! Sports reported that Binder’s bracket was the only time it had a perfect bracket go into the second round in its 18-plus years of hosting a game.
