No. 13 Furman upsets No. 4 Virginia

1 year ago 7

We have our first March Madness upset and it's a big one.

WASHINGTON — JP Pegues made a 3-pointer with 2.4 seconds remaining, and No. 13 seed Furman completed a rally from a 12-point second-half deficit to hand fourth-seeded Virginia another first-round NCAA Tournament loss, 68-67 on Thursday.

Making their first trip to the NCAA Tournament in 43 years, the Paladins (28-7) advanced to the second round in the South Region, where they will play either San Diego State or Charleston on Saturday.

Kihei Clark, who starred as a freshman on Virginia's 2019 national title-winning team, threw a bad pass that Garrett Hein intercepted at midcourt with 7 seconds to go, setting up Pegues' go-ahead basket.

Reece Beekman's deep 3-pointer at the buzzer bounced off the rim and Virginia (25-8) was eliminated in the first round as the higher-seeded team for the third time in its past four NCAA tournaments — most notably its loss as a No. 1 seed to 16th-seeded UMBC in 2018.

Who did Virginia lose to as a 1 seed? 

The loss for Virginia comes on the five-year anniversary of the University of Maryland-Baltimore County pulling off the biggest upset in college basketball history, knocking off Virginia's 2018 squad which was the NCAA tournament's top seed. 

No. 16 seeds were 0-135 against 1 seeds before UMBC's iconic 75-54. win. And it hasn't been repeated since.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

What are the odds of a perfect bracket? 

According to NCAA.com, if you were to simply guess or flip a coin for each matchup, the odds of a perfect NCAA bracket are 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808. 

However, NCAA.com also notes that the odds are more like 1 in 120.2 billion, if the person making the bracket takes into account info about which teams are better and tournament history. 

It's believed that the closest anyone has gotten to a perfect bracket occurred just three years ago.

During the 2019 tournament, an Ohio man correctly guessed all the games going into the Sweet 16, according to NCAA.com. But his streak of 49 correct picks was ended when Purdue beat Tennessee 99-94 in overtime of the second game in the Sweet 16.

In 2022 and 2021, it took just 28 games for there to be no more perfect brackets.

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