With all 12 teams seeded 1-3 and only one team seeded lower than fifth advancing to the Sweet 16, chalky brackets are ruling the roost after the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament. But according to the NCAA, there's only perfect bracket remaining out of the millions submitted in contests run by the organization, along with ESPN, Yahoo, CBS, Fox and Sports Illustrated: An entry dubbed "Center Road" in the NCAA's bracket challenge.
Picking 48 straight games correctly actually is quite the accomplishment. The NCAA says it's the longest streak of correct picks it's ever seen, shattering the previous record of 39 games in 2017.
"Center Road" sticks with the chalky theme of this year's tournament with his/her Sweet 16 picks, picking the eight higher-seeded teams to win. That would create the first-ever Elite Eight consisting entirely of No. 1 and No. 2 seeds.
Over at Yahoo, an entry called "Court Stormers" picked the first 43 games correctly to break that company's record of 39, set two years ago, before whiffing on Sunday evening's Texas Tech-Buffalo game, that entry's lone incorrect pick. Four other entries in the Yahoo contest have only two incorrect picks.
The two leaders atop ESPN's contest both have the same incorrect pick, with "Molly" and "Craig" both wrongly selecting Cincinnati to beat Iowa on Friday afternoon.
As far as celebrities go, actor Jim Parsons picked 15 of 16 region semifinal teams correctly in the “Dan Patrick Show” contest, incorrectly choosing Kansas State instead of Oregon. Former president Barack Obama, meanwhile, correctly picked 12 of the 16 remaining teams, including Oregon.
