NCAA PERFECT BRACKET WATCH Part One: Day One

• And, as usual, it didn't take long:  13-seed Furman ousts 4-seed Virginia 68-67 in Game 2.  For reference, that fells about 82% of all the ESPN brackets (though the fun doesn't really begin until the number isn't in the hundreds of thousands, but the hundreds).  
• To give reference, the Maryland-West Virginia game (Game 1, an 8-9 game, won by Maryland by 2 points) was picked, on ESPN, by about 49% of the brackets.  So, yes, only about (if averaged out) 1 bracket in 12 is still perfect.  But, even on the ESPN game, that's seven figures of brackets.  (Hence, they haven't started ESPN's Perfect Bracket Tracker yet.)
• NCAA.com's Perfect Bracket Tracker notes that the average is a little better than that.  Slightly more than one bracket in ten snagged the 8-9 coin-flip and the tournament's first upset (10.67%).
• I went from my research on the previous years, but the NCAA's research has an interesting quirk:  Three of the last four tournaments (Mr. Nigl's Center Road being the exception) have had the perfect runs end in exactly the 29th game of the tournament (which would be the fifth finished game of the evening run of Day Two).  
• 2015, which I skipped, had an ESPN bracket go 34, which ESPN noted was the first time in the 18 years the game had been going that someone made the Second Round.
• And the 36 in 2014 was reported by Yahoo as the best anybody got there -- to give you an idea of how much an achievement even 32 for 32 in the First Round is.  By my math, I think the number of tracked brackets in all four games to make Second Round is about three dozen, and most of those in the same year.
• 1:15 PDT:  Now ESPN is up to speed.  About half the remaining brackets fell in Game 3, a 7-10 win for Missouri.  And then in a quirk which does happen here, about 10% of the brackets who survived that fell when they actually picked against #1 Kansas.  As of the end of Game 4, three-quarters of a million perfect brackets (out of just over 20 million cast) survived, about 3.8%.
• 3 PDT:  Six are in the books, and we're under a half million now on ESPN.  The number on the NCAA.com situation is 2.21%, which combines Yahoo, ESPN, CBS, and the NCAA's own game.  Even with the ESPN number alone, though, that's 450,000 or so brackets left.  Fun still really hasn't begun just yet.
• End of first session:  DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE IVY LEAGUE!!  15-seed Princeton got 2-seed Arizona!  
• And, as such, ESPN is now down to just 18,078 (and that's just for the first eight games).
• NCAA.com reports the percentage is now well under 1%.  The NCAA's own game reports about 1/8 of 1% left.  Yahoo is down to half that, only 0.06%!  CBS is "processing standings".
• 6:15 PDT:  A lot of fans picked Oral Roberts, and a lot of fans ate it.  ESPN now down to just 6,124 left after Game 10.  The NCAA game is down under 1 bracket in 5000 still perfect.
• 6:50 PDT:  12 in the books now.  ESPN down to just 2,598.  About 10% of that number actually picked #16 seed Northern Kentucky to beat national #2 Houston.  ESPN reports a definite down to, at maximum, just under 1500 with the last four games of the day starting.
• 9 PDT, Midnight Friday morning Eastern:  As of right now, it appears as if the final Day One ESPN number will be somewhere between six and seven hundred.  Game 14 has us down to 1,810, and that is fairly evenly split in the 7-10 between Texas and Penn State.