WASHINGTON — St. Peter’s has delivered the fourth upset of the NCAA tournament and it was the biggest one yet.
The No. 15 seed Saint Peter’s Peacocks beat No. 2 seed Kentucky Wildcats 85-79 in overtime on Thursday night in the first round of the men’s tournament.
Saint Peter’s, which is located in Jersey City, New Jersey, is part of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) and are making their first tournament appearance since 2011. Saint Peter’s defeated Monmouth 60-54 to capture their fourth MAAC Championship and punched their March Madness big dance ticket.
The Peacocks are just the tenth team to pull off an upset as a No. 15 seed. While the March Madness feat is super rare, there was another 15-over-2 upset last year when Oral Roberts shocked everyone by beating Ohio State.
There were three other upsets earlier in the day, including No. 12 seed New Mexico State upsetting No. 5 seed Connecticut 70-63.
Even before that, brackets were pretty busted by the two upsets from earlier Thursday afternoon. After Richmond’s 67-63 upset over Iowa and Michigan’s 75-63 upset win over Colorado State, there were just 1.76% of perfect brackets remaining in NCAA’s Bracket Challenge Game.
Saint Peter’s historic upset will surely knock even more brackets out.
According to NCAA.com, if you were to simply guess or flip a coin for each matchup, the odds of a perfect NCAA bracket are 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808.
However, NCAA.com also notes that the odds are more like 1 in 120.2 billion, if the person making the bracket takes into account info about which teams are better and tournament history.
It’s believed that the closest anyone has gotten to a perfect bracket occurred just three years ago.
During the 2019 tournament, an Ohio man correctly guessed all the games going into the Sweet 16, according to NCAA.com. But his streak of 49 correct picks was ended when Purdue beat Tennessee 99-94 in overtime of the second game in the Sweet 16.
Last year, it took just 28 games for there to be no more perfect brackets.