181 Perfect Brackets Made It to Round 2 in 2025

For the first time since 2019, perfect brackets survived the entire first round. The chalky opening weekend kept more entries alive than any tournament in recent memory.

Why it matters: In 2024, every perfect bracket was gone before the second round started. In 2025, 181 survived out of 34 million entries. The difference was simple: no top-four seed lost in the first round.

Published: March 24, 2025

Out of roughly 34 million brackets submitted across ESPN, CBS, Yahoo, and other major platforms, 181 still had a perfect record when the second round tipped off on Saturday.

That doesn't sound like a lot. But in the context of March Madness, it's remarkable.

Last year, zero brackets survived the first round. The year before that, zero. You have to go back to 2019 to find the last time any perfect brackets made it this far. That year, one Ohio man named Gregg Nigl kept his bracket perfect through 49 games - still the all-time record.

The 2025 tournament made early survival possible because the first round was relatively orderly. No 1-seed, 2-seed, 3-seed, or 4-seed lost. The upsets that did happen were modest: Drake over Missouri as an 11-seed, McNeese over Clemson as a 12-seed, Colorado State over Memphis as a 12-seed.

Those results thinned the field, sure. By the end of the first day, about 36,000 brackets were still perfect - roughly 0.1% of all entries. But the right combination of higher seeds advancing kept a much larger pool alive than usual.

The brackets didn't last long into the second round. No. 10 Arkansas's upset of No. 2 St. John's on Saturday eliminated a huge chunk. By Sunday, every perfect bracket was gone.

But the fact that 181 made it that far tells you something about the tournament's character. When favorites hold serve, brackets survive. When chaos arrives, they don't. There's no in between.

For bracket pool players, the 2025 first round was a gift if you played it safe. The people who got cute with upset picks - calling for a 14 over a 3, or a 15 over a 2 - didn't get rewarded. The chalk players ate.

The odds of a perfect bracket remain 1 in 9.2 quintillion. Nobody's ever going to get there. But in 2025, more people got closer than they had in years.

In short: 181 brackets remained perfect after the first round of the 2025 tournament, the most since 2019. The lack of major first-round upsets kept the field alive longer than usual. All perfect brackets were eliminated in the second round when Arkansas upset St. John's.