2022 Division I Men's Basketball Official Bracket | NCAA.com (2024)

FAQs

What are the odds of picking a perfect NCAA men's basketball bracket? ›

If you flipped a coin for every game in the NCAA Men's Division I College Basketball Tournament the odds of a perfect bracket are astronomical. It would be about 1 in 9.2 quintillion.

There are many different ways to score a March Madness bracket. The most common method is to award 1 point for correct predictions in the first round, 2 in the second round, 4 in the third, 8 in the fourth, 16 in the fifth, and 32 in the sixth and final round.

The amount of different possible outcomes comes out to exactly 9,223,372,036,854,775,808, according to the NCAA.

And, in the process, the Aggies busted the final perfect bracket. As the 2024 men's NCAA Tournament enters the second round on Saturday, there are no more perfect brackets remaining among major online platforms (NCAA, ESPN, CBS and Yahoo), according to the NCAA. No.

Why is it so hard to pick a perfect bracket? The chances of picking a perfect bracket is: 1 in 2 to the 67th power, or 1 in 147,573,952,589,676,412,928, or about 147 quintillion. This assumes that each participant has a 50/50 chance of winning.

Key Facts. USA Today Sports will offer $1 million to any contestant who correctly fills out a perfect bracket—meaning they correctly choose the winner of all 67 games in the tournament on either the men's or women's side—and another $25,000 to the contestant with the best bracket.

Top seeds own a 154-2 all-time record against 16 seeds. FDU vs. Purdue in 2023 was only the second time the upset has happened. That means 16 seeds have a 1.28 winning percentage against 1 seeds in the NCAA tournament.

BRACKET: The name of the bracket. PTS: The number of total points the bracket has earned. MAX: The maximum number of points the bracket can earn through the rest of the tournament. This number can be low if the team a player picked to win the championship is eliminated in an early round.

On average, three of the four No. 1 seeds make it to the Elite Eight each year. There has only been one occurrence in history in which no No. 1 seeds made the Elite Eight (2023).

Therefore, there are 63 games in a normal NCAA tournament bracket. As such, the number of possible outcomes for a bracket is 2^63, or 9,223,372,036,854,775,808.

How many teams are in the NCAA men's basketball bracket? ›

The NCAA men's basketball tournament is made up of 68 teams. On Selection Sunday, before any tournament game is played, those teams are ranked 1 through 68 by the Selection Committee, with the best team in college basketball — based on regular season and conference tournament performance — sitting at No. 1.

Based on the current futures market, the Kansas Jayhawks and UConn Huskies both have an implied 9.1% chance to win the national championship. Alabama (+1200, 7.7%) is the next most likely to win March Madness, followed by Duke (+1300, 7.1%).

Just 81 perfect women's brackets intact after LSU win

No. 3 LSU pulled away in the second half to beat No. 11 Middle Tennessee 83-56, dropping the number of perfect women's brackets in major online games to 81. Just one perfect entry remains in the Women's Bracket Challenge Game.

With 63 games and 2 possible selections for each one, that's 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 possible combinations.

Try $1 billion. That was the lucrative figure that Dan Gilbert from Quicken Loans (now Rocket Companies) and their insurer Berkshire Hathaway Inc. with its super billionaire Chair, Buffett, dangled to sports fans that year in exchange for 63 correct picks—aka a perfect March Madness bracket.

But what are the odds of getting a perfect March Madness bracket? Bookies.com says 9,223,372,036,854,775,808-1. Your chances at this are raised just a little if you know anything about college basketball. Bookies.com also says you are better off playing Powerball or Mega Millions as those odds are 292,201,338-1.

The odds of filling out a perfect bracket are one in 9.2 quintillion. Written out, that's 9,223,372,036,854,775,808.

1 Boilermakers were among the favorites to win it all, but it was the Knights that pulled off a 63-58 stunner. UMBC and Fairleigh Dickinson are the only No. 16 seeds to ever beat a No. 1 seed since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1985.