Zero perfect brackets remaining after March Madness upsets

The chase forthe perfect March Madness bracket will have to wait another year.Again.

In a men’stournament that saw a 2 and a 4 seed lose on Day 1, only a relativehandful of brackets were still intact in the biggest contests when16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson took the floor against Purdue. TheKnightsstunned the top-seededBoilermakersFriday night, sending the remaining perfectbrackets into trash cans everywhere.

On the CBSSports site, 0.0003% of brackets were perfect through the eightearly Friday games, according to Jared Shanker, the network’ssenior director of digital communications. A few hours later, thenetwork tweeted that “March is for busted brackets” indescribing the goose egg.

Consider that98.7% of CBS brackets selected Purdue to defeat FDU while just 0.4%picked FDU to reach the Sweet 16. The network said 38.4% had Purduein the Final Four and 8.8% had the Boilermakers winning thenational championship.

No perfectionfor ESPN’s TournamentChallenge bracket game, either; only 22 brackets out of more than20 million filled out were still perfect earlier Friday and theyvanished as the games wrapped up.

DittoforNCAA March Madness.None left, out of unspecified millions.

Victories bydouble-digit seeds Princeton, Penn State and Furman on Thursday didparticular damage. Only 1.4% of ESPN’s brackets had all three teamsmaking it out of the first round, and only 0.1% had them survivingthe weekend. Fairleigh Dickinson delivered the final blow.

A Universityof Illinois professor who runs an analytics website said Friday hethinks the transfer portal has hurt some power conference schoolsin the NCAA Tournament.

Changesbrought on by an increasingly active portal have diminished thecohesiveness within some marquee programs, saidSheldon Jacobson, who operates thesite BracketOdds.Lower-seeded teams from mid-majorconferences are more likely to have a core group of players whohave been together three or four years.

Seven No. 15seeds have won at least one game over the past 11 years, includingeach of the last three NCAA Tournaments for the firsttime.The latest of course, wasPrincetonover Arizona this week. AndNo. 13 Furman topped No. 4Virginiain another big upset — even before FDU oustedPurdue.

“So althoughit looks like, ”Wow, we have these big upsets,′ statisticallyspeaking, it is not that unusual,” Jacobson said. “There’s not muchdifference between a five, six or seven and a 10, 11 or 12. Surely,the five, six and seven are going to win more often, but not thatmuch more often statistically speaking.”

Jacobson saida day of upsets often leads to a predictable set of results thefollowing day. Much of Friday played out that way, until theFDU-Purdue game.

Looking aheadto the Final Four, Jacobson said the averages indicate at least oneof the teams usually comes from outside the top five seeds in eachregion. Four No. 8s have reached the Final Four, and five No. 11shave made it.

“This datasays that, yeah, you want one or two No. 1s,” Jacobson said “Youprobably want a No. 2 also — sorry, Arizona — but after that, youwant anything between a three and 11, and it’s pretty much of acrapshoot.

“All thesports pundits say, ‘I can’t imagine any of the ones losing.’ Iguarantee they’re going to lose. In fact, I guarantee two of themare going to lose and maybe three before we get to the FinalFour.”