NCAA PERFECT BRACKET WATCH: Part Two: End of Day One

The first day ended, and over 20 million brackets howled into the night.

The first two games, a coin-toss 8/9 and the tournament's first real upset (Furman at 13 beating Virginia at 4), felled almost 90% of all the brackets in the four major games the NCAA tracks.

It does look like the end of Day One got far quieter after Princeton took down Arizona, however.  Northern Kentucky at least gave a 16/1 a look with Houston before falling...

ESPN's first Perfect Bracket Tracker notes that, out of over 20,000,000 brackets cast, only six hundred fifty-eight (658) survived the first day.

The good news for players, though, is that number is four times the number of last year:

• 2022:  #2 Kentucky led a parade of upsets, only 161 ESPN survivors -- and, in all four games the NCAA blog tracks (NCAA, CBS, ESPN, SI), 192 total.
• 2021:  121 survived the first day in the four pools.  Ohio State, Tennessee, and Purdue were 5-liners or above that didn't help the pursuit.  The NCAA blog didn't split through the games.
• 2019:  On a day more like this year than the last two, over 42,000 ESPN brackets actually made it through Day One.  And, as we well know, that was the year of Center Road making it all the way through the first weekend.  15, among all games tracked, survived into the second round.
• 2018:  Information gets sketchier on the minute-to-minute level -- though it is to note that Warren Buffet offered $1,000,000 a year for life for a perfect bracket to the Sweet 16 -- one year BEFORE Nigl actually pulled off the feat!!!

As for 2023, according to NCAA.com:

• 658 ESPN
• 62 NCAA
• 44 CBS
• 23 Yahoo!
• 776 total.

And now the fun begins -- first on a pool-by-pool basis -- to find the last one standing.  And then, of course, the last one standing in all the pools.  Can they make it to Day Three??