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How many perfect brackets remain for the 2023 NCAA Tournament

Brackets busted in a big way on Thursday. We break down how many remain perfect in 2023 heading into Friday.

The Princeton Tigers celebrate after defeating the Arizona Wildcats in the first round of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament at Golden 1 Center on March 16, 2023 in Sacramento, California. Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Friday, 9:28 p.m. ET update: Zero! No perfect brackets are left after No. 16 Fairleigh Dickinson shocked No. 1 Purdue.

Friday, 6:20 p.m. ET update: After Iowa State and NC State’s losses, just 24 perfect brackets remain on ESPN.

Friday, 5:30 p.m. ET update: CBS’ numbers continue to dwindle.

Friday, 4:24 p.m. ET update: Just over 200 perfect brackets remain across all platforms.

Friday, 3:30 p.m. ET update:

According to ESPN, only 315 perfect brackets remain as of 3:30 p.m. ET. There were over 20 million brackets submitted for its tournament challenge this year, meaning only .0016% of users who made picks are still flawless at this juncture of the tournament.


The 2023 NCAA Tournament heads into its second day of action, and we’ve already seen a wild start. On Thursday, No. 13 Furman beat No. 4 Virginia and No. 15 Princeton beat No. 2 Arizona. The other seeded upsets saw No. 10 Penn State beat Texas A&M and No. 9 Auburn beat No. 8 Iowa.

The first 16 games busted most brackets across tournament challenges. And yet, some perfect brackets do still remain. ESPN is tracking perfect men’s brackets and says there are 658 perfect brackets remaining. The ESPN men’s bracket challenge started with 20,056,273, which means .003 percent of brackets remain perfect. Over at Yahoo! only 23 perfect brackets remain in their contests.

There has never been a verified perfect bracket through the entire tournament. The NCAA tracks this kind of information and reports that the 2019 NCAA men’s basketball tournament saw the longest run before losing the first game of a bracket. In that tournament, an Ohio man predicted every game correct in the first two rounds. He lost his bracket in the second game of the Sweet 16 — the 50th game of the tournament — when No. 3 Purdue beat No. 2 Tennessee 99-94 in overtime.