Track how many perfect NCAA brackets are left in 2025 March Madness

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PINNED 8:38 pm, March 20, 2025

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PINNED

Day one of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament is in the books. If you can’t sleep, welcome to the club. If you’re reading this Friday morning, let’s catch you up, shall we?

Chaos almost ensued in the final two games. No. 12 UC San Diego fell just short in a 68-65 loss to No. 5 Michigan and No. 14 UNC Wilmington led late but didn’t have enough in an 82-72 loss vs. No. 3 Texas Tech.

Upsets by No. 12 McNeese and No. 11 Drake did damage to many brackets, as did the tournament-opening win by No. 9 Creighton against No. 8 Louisville.

Based on publicly available data, approximately 36,000 of the more than 34 million entries across major online games (Men’s Bracket Challenge Game, ESPN, CBS, Yahoo, USA Today and X’s Bracket Challenge Game) remain unscathed. This is the most perfect brackets through the first day since 2019, when there were approximately 60,000 left.

Here’s how we got here:

We began with the typical 8 vs. 9 matchup where No. 9 Creighton beat No. 8 Louisville, 89-75, knocking out more than half of the brackets right away.

The next four games saw a handful of top four seeds win comfortably, eliminating a little over one million brackets in the process.

We didn’t see our first major upset until No. 12 McNeese took down No. 5 Clemson, 69-67, bringing the number of perfect brackets from 11 million to below two million.

The biggest bracket busters from there included No. 10 Arkansas’ 79-72 win over No. 7 Kansas, which took the number of perfect brackets below one percent, and No. 11 Drake — the public’s favorite upset pick of the first round in Men’s BCG — defeating No. 6 Missouri, 67-57, leaving fewer than 100,000 perfect brackets.

No. 7 UCLA and No. 2 St. John’s took care of business late. But, once all was said and done, below 0.1 percent of all brackets remain perfect heading into the second day of the first round.

Here’s how many perfect brackets we had heading into the second day in previous years:

2024: 2,100+
2023: 787
2022: 192
2021: 121
2019: Around 60,000

No. 11 Drake’s 67-57 win over No. 6 Missouri erased more than half of the remaining perfect brackets.

The Bulldogs were the most popular first round upset pick — with 44.27% of Men’s Bracket Challenge Game entries selecting the them to advance — and there is now estimated to be fewer than 100,000 perfect brackets intact among major online games (Men’s BCG, ESPN, CBS, Yahoo and USA Today).

The number of perfect brackets keeps on getting smaller.

No. 10 Arkansas’ 79-72 win over No. 7 Kansas brings the total number of perfect brackets to fewer than 1 percent, according to publicly available data.

We began the day with approximately 34 million brackets across major online games (Men’s BCG, ESPN, CBS, Yahoo and USA Today). There are still six games left Thursday night.

Midway through the first day, fewer than 3 percent of brackets remain perfect among major online games (Men’s BCG, ESPN, CBS, Yahoo and USA Today).

No. 11 VCU was a popular upset pick, but No. 6 BYU defeated the Rams 80-71 to advance. No. 8 Gonzaga comfortably beat No. 9 Georgia, 89-68, to also move on. Those two games combined to eliminate more than one million more brackets.

We started the day with more than 34 million brackets. Based on publicly available data, approximately 800,000 brackets remain perfect eight games into the tournament.

More than one-third of men’s brackets — around 36 percent — remain perfect after No. 4 Purdue’s 75-63 win over No. 13 High Point.

We began the day with approximately 34 million brackets across major online games — Men’s Bracket Challenge Game, ESPN, CBS, Yahoo and USA Today — and, two games in, more than 12 million remain perfect.

An estimated 34-plus million brackets begin their pursuit for perfection across major online games (Men’s Bracket Challenge Game, ESPN, CBS, Yahoo and USA Today). This number is based on public information and will be updated throughout the tournament.

Among the millions of brackets, Duke is the most-picked champion with 30.97 percent of Men’s Bracket Challenge Game users selecting the Blue Devils to cut down the nets in San Antonio.

In the first round, No. 11 Drake is the most-picked Men’s BCG upset with 44.27 percent of users selecting the Bulldogs to beat No. 6 Missouri.

The wait is over. March Madness action in the First Round gets underway today with 16 games. We’ll be following millions and millions of brackets across the major online games, seeing how long brackets can remain perfect.

Here’s the rundown of today’s games:

Last year, the final perfect bracket busted on the 31st game — so almost through the first round — when No. 8 Utah State topped No. 9 TCU.

As for Thursday last tournament, more than 2,000 brackets made it safely through the first day.

5:51 pm, February 25, 2025

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.

Click or tap here for more perfect bracket runs info.

5:49 pm, February 25, 2025

When brackets lock at the tip of the first Thursday game, millions of college basketball fans will be tracking their picks, hoping that 12-over-5 upset happens — or their favorite team goes on a run.

Inevitable as it is, that first wrong pick sure does sting, right? Well, don’t worry. You’re not alone. Odds are, no one will fill out a perfect bracket in the men’s or women’s games this year.

Here’s the TL/DR version of the odds of a perfect NCAA bracket:

1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (if you just guess or flip a coin)
1 in 120.2 billion (if you know a little something about basketball)

That number is 9.2 quintillion, by the way. That number is so large that it might help to put it in perspective.

There are 31.6 million seconds in a year, so 9.2 quintillion seconds is a quick 292 billion years.
There have been 5 trillion days since the Big Bang, so repeat the entire history of our universe 1.8 million times.
The Earth’s circumference is approximately 1.58 billion inches, so you’d have to walk around the planet 5.8 billion times.
As of 2015, the best estimates for the number of trees on the planet were three trillion. Imagine that there was one single acorn hidden in one of those three trillion trees, and you were tasked with finding it on the first guess. Your odds of success are approximately three million times greater than picking a perfect bracket.

5:40 pm, February 25, 2025

The chase — and wait — for perfection continued in 2024, though the women’s tracking lasted until the Sweet 16.

Here’s how many brackets remained at the end of each day of competition. Note some of the early days are approximations.

Tournament Starting number Thru Day 1

(1st Rd.) THru Day 2

(1st Rd.) Thru Day 3

(2nd Rd.) Thru Day 4

(2nd Rd.)

Thru Day 5

(Sweet 16) Men’s 31 million+ 2,000+ 0 (Game 31) N/A N/A N/A Women’s 4 million+ <20,000 >1,300 18 4 0 (Game 51) Yet again, the run to perfection lasted longer on the women’s side, even though there were millions more brackets in the men’s games. Men’s brackets busted when No. 8 Utah State beat No. 9 TCU on Game No. 31 in the First Round on Friday. The women’s lasted until Game No. 51, when No. 3 NC State toppled No. 2 Stanford in the Sweet 16 the following Friday.

Why? Upsets — or the lack of them in the women’s bracket. No. 11 Middle Tennessee was the only double-digit seed to win a game in the women’s tournament last year.

On the men’s side, No. 11 Duquesne, No. 11 Oregon, No. 14 Oakland, No. 11 NC State, No. 13 Yale and No. 12 James Madison all pulled off upsets in the first round to help eliminate all men’s brackets.

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