If you did a March Madness bracket this year, it busted over the weekend . . . probably in EPIC fashion . . . because there were some major upsets in just the first few days.
Obviously, the biggest one was the 16-seed University of Maryland-Baltimore County, who CRUSHED the #1 seed Virginia on Friday night, 74-54.
According to the NCAA, going into that game, there were only 25 perfect brackets that were submitted to the official Capital One Bracket Challenge, and on sites like ESPN, Yahoo, and CBS Sports. But they ALL picked Virginia to win.
And of course they did . . . it was THE biggest upset in the history of the NCAA tournament. UMBC became the first 16 seed to win a game in 136 TRIES. But that means that after that shocker, there were NO perfect brackets.
Only 2.18% of all the official brackets picked UMBC to pull off the upset, and naturally, the few that did didn't have all the other games correct. And let's be honest, they were probably either UMBC alumni . . . or people who didn't follow college basketball, and just filled out their brackets randomly.
For reference, 13.73% of all brackets picked Virginia, to win the WHOLE THING. But UMBC won't go all the way either. Their Cinderella run came to an end yesterday. They lost to #9 Kansas State.
But there were several other big upsets over the weekend.
1. On Friday, #13 Marshall took down #4 Wichita State, 81-75. Before this year, Marshall hadn't been in the NCAA tournament in 31 years. But they lost last night to #5 West Virginia, so they're done.
2. On Saturday, #11 Loyola Chicago edged #3 Tennessee, 63-62. Loyola hadn't celebrated a tournament victory since 1985.
3. And yesterday, #11 Syracuse upset #3 Michigan State, 55-53. And that came AFTER they upset #6 TCU, 57-52, on Friday.
4. Also yesterday, #7 Texas A&M eliminated #2 North Carolina, 86-65.
And another #7 Nevada beat another #2 Cincinnati, 75-73, after Cincy blew a 22-point lead.
5. Then late last night, #9 Florida State made another #1 bite the dust. They defeated Xavier in the final minutes, 75-70.
(Hit up ESPN.com to browse all the games by day. NCAA.com has more coverage. And you can see an updated bracket, here.)
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