Every Perfect Bracket Was Gone Before Round 2 in 2024

Out of 31 million brackets submitted, the last perfect entry fell in the final first-round game. Nobody made it to Saturday.

Between the lines: The 2024 tournament had nine total upsets by the NCAA's definition, and seven of them came in the first round. That was enough to wipe out every single perfect bracket before the second round tipped off.

Published: March 25, 2024

Here's a number to sit with: 31 million.

That's roughly how many brackets were submitted across ESPN, CBS, Yahoo, and the NCAA's Bracket Challenge Game for the 2024 men's tournament. Every single one had at least one wrong pick before the first round ended on Friday night.

The culprits arrived early and often.

Day one saw three 11-seeds win - Duquesne over BYU, NC State over Texas Tech, and Oregon over South Carolina. Those results alone wiped out a huge chunk of the field. But the real bracket killer was Oakland's 14-seed upset of 3-seed Kentucky. Less than one percent of brackets survived that game.

Day two continued the damage. By the time 13-seed Yale beat 4-seed Auburn 78-76, only seven perfect brackets remained across all major platforms. Then 12-seed James Madison knocked off 5-seed Wisconsin and six of those seven were gone.

The final perfect bracket - an entry named "Medalstick 84's Picks 7" on ESPN - needed TCU and Saint Mary's to win the last two games of the round. Neither did. Utah State beat TCU. Grand Canyon stunned Saint Mary's. Perfection was dead.

For context, the longest a bracket has ever stayed perfect was 49 games in 2019 - a record set by Gregg Nigl from Columbus, Ohio, who correctly picked every game through the first round and deep into the second round. That record has never been seriously threatened since.

The 2024 tournament was particularly punishing in the first round because the upsets were spread across all four regions. The damage was spread evenly - a death by a thousand cuts. A 14 over a 3 here, a 13 over a 4 there, three 11-seeds winning in a single day.

But here's the twist: after the carnage of the opening weekend, the tournament got very chalky. All four 1-seeds and all four 2-seeds made the Sweet 16 - the first time that had happened since 2009. Only two teams seeded lower than 5 made it to the second weekend: 6-seed Clemson and 11-seed NC State.

So if you survived the first-round chaos with a reasonable bracket, you probably did pretty well from there. The lesson, as always: the first round is where brackets go to die. The later rounds tend to be more predictable. Build your bracket to survive Thursday and Friday, and you'll be in decent shape for the rest.

In short: All 31 million brackets submitted for the 2024 tournament had at least one wrong pick before the second round. Seven first-round upsets did the damage, with Oakland over Kentucky as the biggest bracket-buster. After the chaotic opening weekend, the rest of the tournament played out mostly chalk.