Michigan Grad has first perfect bracket ever through 2 rounds
This is an incredible accomplishment. Yet I hope this Michigan man is wrong in the elite 8 matchup with Gonzaga...
I would rather win the lottery.
Filling out a bracket is a very random exercise...it does not matter how much information you have gathered. Here, "Better to be lucky than good" surely applies. But sure, "Congratulations on your lucky guessing!!!".
Who invited Debbie Downer?
That’s simply not true. Obviously, there is a huge element of luck, but to say that all of the pics are just luck is silly.
March 26th, 2019 at 10:59 AM ^
Disagree pretty vehemently here. Any perfect bracket will include picks that had a less than 50% chance of being correct -- if, e.g., Kansas St were to play UCI 100 times, they'd almost certainly win more than 50. So getting a perfect bracket doesn't just mean making the wisest possible picks and relying on luck for them to bear out, it means making objectively suboptimal picks and having the extraordinary luck of being suboptimal in just the right way.
This is really all about luck.
March 26th, 2019 at 11:19 AM ^
To have a perfect bracket at this point is 100% luck. To say otherwise is to not understand statistics.
Even if you were able to correctly pick games 90% of the time (which is a ludicrously high number and not possible), you would only have a 0.6% chance of having a perfect bracket after 2 rounds. Take that number down to 75% correct pick rate, your chances of having a perfect bracket go down to 0.0001%
73.6% of statistics are made up.
/s
You contradicted yourself with your statistics unWavering.
A lottery 100% luck; a basketball pool is a combination of luck and skill.
If you chose teams completely randomly (like a lottery) your chances of having a perfect bracket after 2 rounds would be 1 in 281,474,976,710,656 (according to ncaa.com).
Therefore, if you're able through skill to consistently pick an average of 75% of games correctly, you have a massively better chance of picking a perfect bracket.
It's still lucky, because as you noted that chance is still very tiny.
Not a contradiction at all. My point was to demonstrate that even if you have "skill" at picking teams to win in the tourney, your chances of having a perfect bracket are still vanishingly small. Yes, you can improve your chances of having a better bracket, but the chances of having a perfect bracket are still so small that it takes dumb luck to get it right.
So maybe I shouldn't have said it was 100% luck. It's something like 99.9999% luck, vs 100% luck for a completely randomized bracket being perfect.
I don't mean to belabor my point - I'll just leave it at this.
According to your stats, if you can pick 75% correctly, your odds are about 1 in a million, right?
If it's 50/50, your odds are in the trillions.
Guess it's about one's perspective. Your point seems to be it would still be really lucky to be the one in a million; mine is that it's no where near 100% luck - picking knowledgeably at least makes it possible.
The person who randomly picks teams never wins their pool; it's always someone who makes educated guesses. Do they still need luck? Absolutely. Combination luck and skill - my point.
Anyway, hope you win whatever pool(s) you're in - especially if you picked Michigan!
You're changing the scope of the conversation. Are people who know more about basketball likely to do better in their bracket pools? Yes. Are people who know more about basketball more likely to have a perfect bracket? Not really, at least not in any meaningful way.
The numbers I threw out were meant to demonstrate just how small your chances are, even when you have a reasonably high chance of being right on any one game. The problem is that your chances of being right on more than a few games in any given bracket are likely around 50%. This will lower your chances of having a perfect bracket VERY fast, to the point where it really doesn't matter if you know anything about basketball or not, your chances are pretty much zero, along with the people who know nothing about basketball. There is zero "skill" involved when it comes to having a perfect bracket.
I'm pretty sure my point total in my bracket will be higher than his once Michigan beats the crap out of Gonzaga! Go Blue!
Too bad he does not work for Warren Buffet.
Now that would be a Walmart Wolverine!
This seems weird - surely there are a lot of folks who correctly predict the Sweet 16 field, especially when it's as chalky as it is this year. That's a lot different than having a perfect bracket through two rounds. It's the first round upsets that serve as the biggest obstacle to a perfect bracket. I have a feeling CBS Sports worded the article incorrectly.
March 26th, 2019 at 10:14 AM ^
I took it to mean "picked every winner correctly leading up to the sweet 16"
March 26th, 2019 at 11:14 AM ^
That would make more sense, but it doesn't logically follow from the text in the article ("promising to pay $1 million a year for life to any Berkshire Hathaway employee who successfully predicts the entire Sweet 16 field"). Shitty writing by CBS.
This. According to ESPN, my pool ranks 189k of about 20M, so top 1% - I (luckily) picked the Sweet 16 correctly, but missed a bunch in the first round.
What an idiot, he has Kentucky in the finals. Obviously he knows nothing.
/S of course.
My bracket is still perfect. Filled it out yesterday.
The guy wins either way...UM wins, he’s happy, Gonzaga goes, he’s famous.
We are beating Gonzaga. He is going to have to be happy with the near perfect bracket and that his Wolverines get to play in another Final Four.
Do we know he’s a UofM grad other than the fact he refers to them as “my” Wolverines?
Are you related to "outsidethebox"?
March 26th, 2019 at 12:13 PM ^
According to his linkedin page, he went to SVSU and and something called Nova Southeastern.
March 26th, 2019 at 12:53 PM ^
nice find. and he's in columbus. highly suspicious.
Well, according to that other news venue he's a neuropsychologist, and he grew up in Saginaw. I totally get growing up and rooting for Michigan and then life takes you elsewhere for school. Many people still root for Michigan, especially if their school doesn't have much in the way of sports (looking at you Ivy grads).
Also, Columbus probably needs a lot of psychologists, so, don't hate.
Sorry if I killed anyone’s dream with this one. I was born and raised by Michigan grads (in East Lansing - ugh - different tale for a different day). Have been to about 70 football games, a Rose Bowl, the regional semifinal in ‘89, and two Final Fours. I live and die by how Michigan does in football and basketball. But I didn’t go to school there. There are a lot of us, probably mostly from Michigan, who identify with the teams every bit as much as someone who went there.
This man is chill! If I had a perfect bracket, I would not have gone to sleep while Oregon/UC Irvine were playing like this dude did.
March 26th, 2019 at 10:02 AM ^
My avatar gives MSU better odds than us
March 26th, 2019 at 10:03 AM ^
It's surprising that he's the only perfect bracket alive. There's really only 1 low seed and that's Oregon whom many liked. Auburn isn't that big of a surprise as poorly as Wisconsin was playing.
The first round was really pretty typical. 3 12 seeds and a 13 won in the first round, not to mention the usual 10's and 11's. There just wasn't a big stunner like last year.
It's the second round that was especially chalky.
March 26th, 2019 at 10:08 AM ^
A quick LinkedIn search suggests he is not. Not that it should diminish the story. He is still clearly a Michigan fan, fighting the good fight living in Columbus, Ohio. Good luck to him... in three of his regions, anyway.
March 26th, 2019 at 10:16 AM ^
The fact that this Michigan fan lives in Columbus, Ohio makes story even better.
March 26th, 2019 at 10:35 AM ^
He's on the Today show...appears he went to Saginaw Valley State.
https://www.today.com/video/this-man-has-the-last-perfect-march-madness-bracket-1464911939641
March 26th, 2019 at 11:01 AM ^
This Texas Tech game has me worried. "We" need to bring our best game and play defense like "our" hair is on fire.
March 26th, 2019 at 11:06 AM ^
I went to the future yesterday. He won't stay perfect much longer.
March 26th, 2019 at 11:10 AM ^
Impressive, although it's also a testament to how chalky this tournament has been. I know several people who have between 12 and 14 of the Sweet 16 right.
I'll take that point another step - I somehow managed to pick a perfect 2nd round, got all 16 picks right.
My bracket ranks in the top 189k (of 20M or so) in ESPN's Tournament Challenge - I didn't do all that well in the first round.
So, it's likely at least 200k people picked a perfect Sweet Sixteen - or picked a perfect first round, even more impressive.
Despite a perfect Sweet 16, I won't even win my pool unless my championship pick makes it to the championship game at minimum. Go Blue!
March 26th, 2019 at 11:10 AM ^
Poor guy lives in Columbus. He'll come home to a burned down house.
March 26th, 2019 at 11:18 AM ^
Which gives him another reason to move.... win win win
March 26th, 2019 at 11:48 AM ^
Trailer, not house.
March 26th, 2019 at 11:36 AM ^
Nice. On a related note, the final perfect bracket in ESPN (was perfect throughout most of Saturday) had Michigan winning the championship and beating msu in the Final Four.
https://thespun.com/more/top-stories/only-perfect-bracket-left-espn-bracket-challenge
March 26th, 2019 at 11:53 AM ^
This has been a relatively upset-free tournament, so if anyone was going to come up with a perfect bracket after two rounds, it would be this season. Out of the 32 1st round games, 12 were won by the lower seed, and four of those 12 "upsets" were the 9 seeds, which is basically a toss-up. Out of the 16 2nd round games, the lower seed only won 2 of them.
Currently, all the 1-3 seeds in each region have advanced and 2 of the 4 seeds have also advanced, along with 5 seeded Auburn and 12th seeded Oregon playing the role of Cinderella. This has been a pretty boring year for shocking results with no real bracket-busting upsets (although UCF came close to giving us one).
Yeah.
You could really say that Duke, LSU and TN probably all lost if a competent ref was around the last 10 seconds or so.
Pretty sure nobody had all of them losing the first weekend, so the refs have helped keep this a little blase as well.
March 26th, 2019 at 12:53 PM ^
Love the wife in the background laughing and telling him "Yeah he already said that"...sounds familiar.
Why do you have the word "ever" in the post? This is very much incorrect.
Being a Michigan fan, I read the article waiting for a shout out to Seth’s Bracket Assist spreadsheet, but it never came...
March 27th, 2019 at 10:40 PM ^
Funny thing reading these posts: the Michigan grad is female though everyone who uses a pronoun assumes otherwise
She he lives down the street from me.