After the first day of the 2014 NCAA tournament, 93 percent of the brackets entered in College Hockey Pickem 2014 are out of the running for the coveted perfect bracket.
(For the record: No, $1 billion is not on the line here.)
Of 10,937 completed brackets, only 807 (7 percent) correctly picked all four Friday outcomes.
You could argue that North Dakota’s upset of Midwest Regional top seed Wisconsin did a lot of people in, but are 4-over-1 upsets really all that hard to see coming anymore?
We’ve reached nine straight years with a No. 4 seed winning on the opening Friday of the tournament.
2006: Holy Cross 4, Minnesota 3, OT
2007: Massachusetts 1, Clarkson 0, OT
2008: Notre Dame 7, New Hampshire 3
2009: Air Force 2, Michigan 0; Miami 4, Denver 2
2010: Rochester Institute of Technology 2, Denver 1
2011: Colorado College 8, Boston College 4
2012: Cornell 3, Michigan 2, OT
2013: Yale 3, Minnesota 2, OT
2014: North Dakota 5, Wisconsin 2
Of those 10 teams, four took the next step and won the second-round game to advance to the Frozen Four: Notre Dame in 2008, Miami in 2009, RIT in 2010 and Yale in 2013.
Keep that in mind 51 weeks from now when you’re eyeing up those Friday games in College Hockey Pickem 2015.
