UMBC's upset eliminated the last perfect bracket on Yahoo Sports
Next to Tony Bennett and his sad band of Virginia Cavaliers, we think we’ve found the person who’s most upset about UMBC’s momentous upset in the NCAA tournament on Friday night.
Yes, “My Superb Bracket” still sits alone atop the Yahoo Sports Tourney Pick’Em leaderboard after correctly predicting 31 of 32 first-round games.
But it would’ve been a perfect 32 for 32 had top-seeded Virginia not fallen victim to the biggest upset in college basketball history.
Talk about a punch in the gut. The user behind this bracket correctly predicted Arizona’s fall to Buffalo on Thursday night when 94.8 percent of Yahoo users went with the Wildcats. It also tabbed Loyola Chicago over Miami (Fla.) when 63.1 percent forecast the Hurricanes.
Yet there was nothing it could do to prevent from being among the record 99.1 percent of users that took a strikethrough for Virginia in the 30th game of the tournament.
Will you look at this?
At least he or she can take solace in the fact that they didn’t have the Cavaliers getting past Tennessee in the Elite Eight. The same can’t be said for the 37.5 percent of entries that had Virginia reaching the Final Four or 20.8 percent that thought the Cavaliers would win the whole thing.
One other point of pride for “Superb”: The entry remained perfect for four games longer than the rest of the field; Kansas State’s win over Creighton in the 25th game of the tournament earlier Friday whittled the surviving perfect brackets from five to just one.
No perfect entries surviving the first round in 2018 is a stark turnaround from 2017, when 36 brackets took advantage of a chalky first round to stay unblemished. One user hit a Yahoo Sports-record 39 straight games and went 47 for 48 over the first weekend.
This year’s field, however, did much better than all entries in 2016. That was the year that a rash of double-digit seeds ruined 99.99 percent of entries within seven hours and 15th-seeded Middle Tennessee State provided the dagger by upsetting second-seeded Michigan State in the tournament’s 21st game.
Around 22,000 entries took UMBC over Virginia in the first round, though it is impossible to tell how many of those were in “imperfect brackets,” an inverse March Madness contest designed to pick the most losing games.
More March Madness coverage from Yahoo Sports:
• UMBC shocks Virginia, first 16-seed ever to beat a No. 1
• What is UMBC? Everything you need to know about the university
• UMBC’s upset eliminated last perfect bracket in Yahoo Sports Tourney Pick’em
• Where UMBC’s upset of Virginia ranks among all-time greatest upsets
• Meet UMBC’s other hero, the man behind its famous Twitter account