March Madness: Ole Miss' stunning upset of No. 1 Stanford busts final NCAA women's bracket
It took until the final game on Day 3 of the tournament, but the final perfect women's NCAA tournament bracket at Yahoo was busted on Sunday when No. 1-seeded Stanford suffered a shocking 54-49 loss to No. 8 Ole Miss.
The day began with one unblemished bracket and it nearly held up all eight second-round games Sunday. Ole Miss spoiled the party late Sunday night on Stanford's home court.
In the men's tournament, Yahoo brackets were wiped out even quicker after a flurry of first-round upsets. For a while, it looked like the women's tournament was trending the same way, but one person made it through the entire first round.
Only 28.3% of brackets were still perfect after the first two games of the women's tourney, which were No. 9 South Florida beating No. 8 Marquette and No. 7 Arizona beating No. 10 West Virginia. By the end of the day, less than 0.1% of brackets were perfect, despite every No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, No. 4 and No. 5 seed surviving.
The big upsets came early Saturday and devastated nearly every remaining bracket. No. 12 seed FGCU took down No. 5 seed Washington State and No. 12 Toledo knocked off No. 5 Iowa State in the first few games. The first left only 42 perfect brackets, then the Rockets cut it down to only four.
By March Madness standards, it wasn't the most chaotic first round. Every top-4 seed got through to the second round, with the two 12-5 upsets providing most of the chaos. It just goes to show the sheer mathematical challenge of going 32-for-32 picking games.
One perfect bracket remained after the first round was complete. It was officially the last bracket standing after No. 10 seed Baylor's upset of No. 7 Alabama on Saturday afternoon, but needed to pick six more games to remain perfect.
The bracket went chalk with all those games, however, and that turned out to be a wise strategy.
The good news for this bracket? It's Final Four of South Carolina, LSU, Connecticut and Iowa are all still alive. The bracket has an All-SEC national championship game of South Carolina defeating LSU 75-61.
