March Madness women's perfect bracket tracker: Only 2 perfect brackets remain after second round
Only 112 people made it out of the first round unscathed.
But by Monday night, after the second round of the women's NCAA tournament officially ended, only two were left.
Perfect brackets in the Yahoo Sports Women's Bracket Mayhem immediately dwindled through the first four games of the second round. There was only one true upset to start the day, which came in the form of a one-point overtime win by No. 5 Kansas State over No. 4 Kentucky. Kansas State edged that win out behind 24 points from Temira Poindexter, which got the Wildcats into the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2002. South Carolina, after an early scare, rallied to make it past Indiana on Sunday afternoon.
No. 2 Duke fended off No. 10 Oregon to also reach the Sweet 16. Hannah Hidalgo then led No. 3 Notre Dame to a 21-point blowout win over No. 6 Michigan to advance. Those four games wiped out 78 perfect brackets.
Then, thanks in large part to Ole Miss' upset win over Baylor in the second wave of games, 19 more brackets were eliminated. TCU's win over Louisville, which pitted star Hailey Van Lith against her former team, then eliminated one more bracket. Tennessee's win over Ohio State, which was the third upset of a No. 5 seed over a No. 4 seed on the day, knocked out four more brackets on Sunday night.
Texas rolled to a dominant win over Illinois on Monday afternoon to start the fourth day of play, and NC State followed suit with a 34-point win over Michigan State. Those two games eliminated one more bracket and left just 9 perfect brackets remaining. Iowa's loss to the Sooners cut three more brackets out, and then Maryland and LSU winning cut out four more to get us down to just two left.
Upsets were hard to come by in the first two rounds of the tournament, but 97.7% of entries this year were still busted by the end of the first day. There was then a steady decline on Saturday as the first round wrapped up, even without many big upsets. No. 10 South Dakota State led the charge on that front with its win over No. 7 Oklahoma State. No. 6 Florida State, which was the least-picked No. 6 seed in the tournament, rolled past George Mason, too. Both of those games brought the total number down below 200.
While the women's side still has hope for a perfect bracket, the men's tournament had its final perfect bracket eliminated during the second round of play on Saturday.
The Gamecocks were the most popular pick to win the women's national championship this season. More than 20% of Yahoo users went with them to repeat, while just more than 19% opted to go with Paige Bueckers and UConn. UCLA and USC each also received double-digit support.
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