26 Year Old Bro With The Last Perfect Bracket In The Country Didn't Watch A College Hoops Game All Year
ESPN - And then there were none. In the 35th game of the NCAA tournament, the final perfect bracket fell.
A 26-year-old sign language interpreter from Cleveland picked his favorite team — Ohio State — to beat Arizona. The Wildcats bested the Buckeyes 73-58 Saturday night.
On Friday night, the man who became the sole ESPN.com entrant with a perfect bracket through the round of 64 was checking his phone from a salsa club, reloading the final scoreboards to make sure he still had every game correct.
By day’s end, Malachi, who asked to keep his last name anonymous out of privacy concerns, had the only one out of 11.57 million brackets with every team still in green.
So what type of basketball savant is this guy? How much research and number crunching did he do?
“Nothing,” he said Saturday, after his first two picks of the day, UCLA and Kentucky, advanced. “I actually haven’t watched a full game this entire year.”
Malachi got much further than anyone got last year, as no entry on any of the major websites survived the round of 64.
He said his brother called him Thursday morning to remind him that he only had 15 minutes to fill out a bracket. He filled out two.
“I knew I had to have some upsets, but I can’t really give you specific reasons as to why I chose certain teams over others,” he said.
In the Midwest and the East, Malachi chose all the favorites to win, with the exception of Dayton. In the West and South, he then picked both 14 seeds, Georgia State and UAB, to beat Baylor and Iowa State, respectively. Other upsets included his favorite team, Ohio State, beating VCU, and UCLA beating SMU.
Malachi has a great chance of winning his brother’s bracket contest, but as he looks at his bracket, he says he is upset about picking Kansas to beat Kentucky in the Elite Eight.
“I didn’t realize KU was kind of having a down year and Kentucky was where they were,” Malachi said. “If I were to do it over again, I would have Kentucky winning that game.”
Malachi also has been ribbed by those looking at the score of the title game in his bracket — Duke 58, Kansas 0.
Quick little story from ESPN just to confirm everything you already knew already about your brackets. All the time you put in every year, all the games you watch, all the Bracketology shows full of “experts.” It’s pointless. It doesn’t matter. Because every year it’s going to be someone like Malachi the sign language interpreter from Cleveland who did his bracket in 5 minutes because he was late for the Salsa Club that’s going to win all the money. Because god hates sports fans and he hates you. It’s why you’re losing to your mom in the family bracket right now. It’s why you’re bringing up the rear in the office pool while Karen from HR who let her newborn child that she just took 14 months paid maternity leave for pick all his favorite mascots is in first. Don’t feel bad, don’t get down on yourself and convince yourself you know nothing about sports. Keep your head up, and take comfort in the fact that you know Duke isn’t going to beat Kansas in the championship game 58-0.