The longest an NCAA bracket has ever stayed perfect
NCAA.com • • sports
Key Points:
- The longest verified streak of correct NCAA tournament bracket picks to start March Madness is 49 games, set by Gregg Nigl in 2019, who correctly predicted through the Sweet 16 before his bracket busted.
- Since 2014, no bracket has survived past the Sweet 16 round, with most brackets busting in the first or second rounds due to upsets, such as the historic 16-seed UMBC beating No. 1 Virginia in 2018.
- The 2019 tournament saw an unusually high number of perfect brackets surviving the first round, with about 15 perfect brackets after 32 games, but only Nigl's bracket remained perfect through 49 games.
- The odds of completing a perfect 63-game NCAA bracket are astronomically low, ranging from 1 in 9.2 quintillion (random picks) to 1 in 28 billion (with basketball knowledge), making Nigl's achievement exceptionally rare.
- Tracking of brackets has improved since 2016, with millions of online brackets monitored annually across major games, but verifying records is challenging due to inconsistent historical data and bracket manipulation possibilities.
