|
| Mercer forward Jakob Gollon (20) and guard Langston Hall (21) celebrate after defeating Duke 78-71 in an NCAA college basketball second-round game against Duke, Friday, March 21, 2014, in Raleigh, N.C. |
The billion dollar dream is over.
A
second day of upsets ended any chance of someone having a perfect NCAA
tournament bracket in Warren Buffet's $1 billion challenge. It was a
favorite that provided the first blemish on the final three people's
brackets in the Quicken Loans contest on the Yahoo Sports website.
All three had ninth-seeded George Washington beating Memphis. The Tigers won 71-66.
"If
Warren Buffett wants to donate the (billion) to our university, we will
take it and use it in good company,"
Memphis coach Josh Pastner said.
"We'll find a way."
It only took 25 games for
everyone to be eliminated. Then again most of brackets were knocked out
on the tournament's first full day. The number of unblemished brackets
kept dwindling after third-seed Duke, sixth-seed UMass and seventh-seed
New Mexico lost Friday.
Only 16 people
remained perfect after 10th-seeded Stanford topped New Mexico. Then
Tennessee routed UMass, leaving only six people with a chance of beating
the 9.2 quintillion-to-1 odds.
Gonzaga's victory over Oklahoma State cut that down to the final three.
Even though no one won the $1 billion, the top 20 scores will still each get $100,000.
Quicken
Loans, which is sponsoring and insuring the Buffet contest, said on its
Twitter feed that it wouldn't reveal the number of entrants to the
challenge. The pool was supposed to be capped at 15 million entries. It
probably wouldn't have mattered if they had let more people join.
At
CBSSports.com, only 0.03 percent of entrants were still perfect after
Mercer upset Duke. They didn't last much longer as Tennessee's rout of
UMass wiped out all the remaining unblemished entries. It took 21 games
to end everyone's hope of perfection this year. Last season it took 23
games and 24 in 2012.
A year ago, not a single
person of the 11 million who entered on ESPN's website was perfect
after a first day filled with upsets. Just four got 15 out of 16 right.
This
year people lasted a little longer. After the first 25 games, three
perfect brackets remained out of the 11 million entered.
No comments:
Post a Comment