Talk about One Shining Moment.
From tens of millions incredibly down to one, Gregg Nigl — a 40-year-old neuropsychologist from Columbus, Ohio — astonishingly is a perfect 48-for-48 on NCAA.com’s March Madness Bracket Challenge game through the first two rounds of NCAA Tournament action.
Fourteen of the 16 teams to reach the Sweet 16 are top-4 seeds, and No. 5 Auburn also remains in the field, with the only double-digit seed still alive being No. 12 Oregon in the South Region.
Nigl’s entry, titled “Center Road,” has all of the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds advancing to the Elite Eight, with Gonzaga emerging as national champions over Kentucky and a Final Four that also features fellow top-seeds Duke and Virginia. He told the NCAA website that this was one of four brackets he filled out this year.
“This is my friend’s bracket [group] that he invited me to, and I almost didn’t fill it out because we were just doing it for fun and I’m in a couple other ones at work and stuff. Almost didn’t even fill it out,” Nigl said. “I do it every year. I’d probably say 10 to 15 years now.
“I always watch bracketology, I listen to them, take into account what they say. And then, honestly, sometimes it’s which teams I like better. Some cities I like better, some teams I like better, some coaches I like better. I do look at the rankings, too. It’s a combination of things. Don’t get me wrong, a bunch of this is luck. I know that. I’m not going to say I knew every matchup by any means.”
According to NCAA.com, even if every game were a coin flip, the odds of
for the entire tournament would be
. Before this year, the longest verifiable unbeaten streak to start the Big Dance was 39 consecutive wins.
“It’s funny, the one that I’m perfect in was the one that I wasn’t really checking, because it was amongst just a few friends,” Nigl said. “And honestly, I don’t even know if my other friends filled one out. I might be the only one in the group who filled one out, I don’t know.
“But yeah, I did four. And I almost didn’t fill that one out, because I was actually sick on Thursday, and I filled it out Thursday morning, right before the deadline, and I almost didn’t do it. I was lying in bed, I was sick, and I called into work. I almost went back to bed and didn’t fill it out, but I did it anyway because I felt bad because it was my friend’s [group].
“Honestly, when I got this message, I thought it was a joke, or a prank or something, you know?”
