For the first time ever, one perfect bracket remains heading into the Sweet Sixteen rounds of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championships. According to NCAA.com, after 48 out of a total 63 games have been played, a bracket titled “Center Road” is the only one that has been able to predict with one hundred percent accuracy. This bracket belongs to Gregg Nigl, a 40-year-old neuropsychologist from Columbus, O.H., who said that he actually had no idea that his bracket was in fact perfect.
With a plethora of upsets that have already occurred, the chance of having a perfect bracket at this point in the tournament are slim to none, with the odds of correctly selecting 48 games being exactly 1 in 28,474,976,710,656.
From UC Irvine beating Kansas State by six, to Murray State dominating Marquette by nearly 20 in the first round to the 12th-seeded Oregon Ducks surviving into the third round, Nigl’s accomplishments have both amateurs and professionals alike in pure awe.
Nigl entered his bracket into the Capital One NCAA March Madness Bracket Challenge and was ultimately contacted in order to break the news of his highly unlikely success. When called, he was completely unaware of his record-setting performance, as the NCAA reports that the longest game predicting streak ended at 39 games in a row.
Of course, everyone is wondering what Nigl’s tactics were. In his interview with the NCAA, Nigl said he has been a lifelong basketball fan and has been filling out multiple brackets across several pools for about 10 to 15 years, sending in four for this year’s tournament. He does admit to paying attention to some bracketology but says that it mostly comes down to his simple personal preferences. After making his initial choices based upon actual basketball facts and their corresponding seedings, Nigl shares that the rest of his picks come down to a variety of miscellaneous factors, including which cities he likes best, the rivalries of the teams themselves and even their coaches. However, Nigl attributes his success to sheer luck, saying that he never expected this degree of perfection in his choices that more or less could have been random.
While Nigl’s bracket has yet to see a loss so far, there are still 15 games left to be played. In his interview with the NCAA, it was said that while it cannot be calculated exactly, the odds of a completely flawless bracket are nearly a 1 in 9.2 quintillion chance. However, at this rate, Nigl just might be the first person to ever do this.
His Final Four includes a number one seed matchup on one side, pinning Duke against Gonzaga, and a showdown against the number one seed in the South region, Virginia, and the number two seed from the Midwest region, Kentucky. Ultimately, he chose Gonzaga to beat Kentucky in the championship, straying from the very common choice of seeing the basketball dynasties of Duke and North Carolina have another intense encounter. Although the statistical chances are not in his favor, hopes are high that Nigl’s bracket will stay intact until the very end, making history one round at a time.
