There's a reason Warren Buffett offers his perfect March Madness bracket challenge every year. Correctly predicting the most chaotic, unpredictable and electric sporting event of the year is almost statistically impossible. And while the perfect bracket remains an unclaimed, an insane fraction of ESPN's brackets correctly predicted the 2023 men's Final Four.
Seriously. Be honest: How many of us had San Diego State and Florida Atlantic University advancing beyond the Sweet 16? March is for Madness.
Picking SDSU, UConn, FAU and Miami is No Easy Task
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Out of the 20 million brackets created on ESPN, only 37 brackets correctly predicted the Final Four participants. That's crazy. UConn isn't too much of a shocker, considering the year that Dan Hurley's Huskies have had in the Big East. Miami head coach Jim Larrañaga has experience being an underdog — bringing George Mason to the Final Four in 2006 — but his Hurricanes weren't too crazy of a long shot either. But FAU and San Diego State are definitely the outliers in these 37 brackets.
Florida Atlantic had to dodge Kansas State and Tennessee, but it's more of whom the Owls didn't face that made the difference. The Purdue, Marquette and Kentucky exits paved the way for a smoother journey to the Final Four than anticipated. With the exception of its Elite Eight battle with Kansas State, FAU looked evenly matched with its opponents.
The San Diego State Aztecs, on the other hand? They had to earn their Final Four berth the hard way.
Aided by Princeton's first-round upset of Arizona, an early NCAA championship favorite, San Diego State's toughest challenge came against Brandon Miller and the Alabama Crimson Tide. Many brackets believed the NCAA champion would come out of the South Regional, with Alabama and Arizona seeded as No. 1 and 2, respectively, in that quadrant. But, if the name is any clue, March is full of Madness — and this Final Four is no exception.
