:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72086844/usa_today_20252445.0.jpg "March Madness bracket 2023: How many perfect brackets remain on Friday afternoon")
Friday's slate of first round games in the 2023 NCAA Tournament are well underway and brackets continue to be slashed left and right as the number of perfect ones rapidly dwindle.
According to ESPN, only 315 perfect brackets remain as of 3:30 p.m. ET. There were over 20 million brackets submitted for its tournament challenge this year, meaning only .0016% of users who made picks are still flawless at this juncture of the tournament.
This doesn't come as a surprise considering the chaos we witnessed on Thursday. The first major blow came when No. 13 Furman clipped No. 4 Virginia and even more were blemished when No. 15 Princeton knocked off Arizona. In fact, 11.1% of ESPN's users had the Wildcats in the Final Four, so that outcome wrecked the brackets for a significant number of people. Even with the number of perfect brackets already at a minuscule number heading into Friday, we nearly had another major upset with No. 14 Kennesaw State holding a significant lead on No. 3 Xavier. The Musketeers eventually stormed back to avoid the upset.
We'll continue to keep tabs on the perfect brackets here until there are none left. Or who knows, maybe there's some Nostradamus out there who will get this entire thing right.