{"id":150077,"date":"2026-03-27T14:41:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T14:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/150077\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T14:41:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T14:41:07","slug":"an-eighth-grader-from-pittsburgh-is-all-alone-with-a-perfect-womens-ncaa-bracket-wpxi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/150077\/","title":{"rendered":"An eighth grader from Pittsburgh is all alone with a perfect women\u2019s NCAA bracket \u2013 WPXI"},"content":{"rendered":"

PITTSBURGH (AP) \u2014 The only perfect bracket left after the opening weekend of the men\u2019s and women\u2019s NCAA tournaments<\/a> \u2014 from more than 40 million entries across all the major contests \u2014 was produced not by some college basketball expert or betting guru but an eighth grader from suburban Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n

His name is Otto Schellhammer. He is 14 years old.<\/p>\n

And despite his perfect-so-far women\u2019s bracket,<\/a> he admits to knowing nothing about hoops.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know people say this a lot about March Madness,\u201d Schellhammer told The Associated Press, sitting beside his mom, Amy, between school and lacrosse practice on Wednesday, \u201cbut it was 100% luck. I know basically nothing about any type of basketball.<\/p>\n

\u201cI play with my friends,\u201d he added, \u201cbut I don\u2019t really watch it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh, he\u2019ll be watching now. Schellhammer has correctly picked the first 48 women\u2019s games in ESPN\u2019s Tournament Challenge, leaving him just 15 away from perfection. He has Texas cutting down the nets on April 5 in Phoenix.<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s impossible to know whether there are any other perfect brackets in millions of smaller pools all across the country, the NCAA has tracked seven of the largest contests for years, said Mike Benzie, the senior director of content for NCAA Digital. This year they totaled about 36 million men\u2019s entries and 5.2 on the women\u2019s side, which means Schellhammer\u2019s is better than one-in-a-million.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s one in 41.2 million.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s absolutely hilarious,\u201d said Amy Schellhammer, who actually did play high school ball. \u201cIt\u2019s just so fun to see. It\u2019s exciting. I\u2019m excited he\u2019s into women\u2019s basketball now. He\u2019s been watching and it\u2019s making him more excited about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most people have heard that picking a perfect bracket is harder than winning the lottery, but exactly how hard is it? The late DePaul mathematics professor Jeffrey Bergen calculated the odds at 1 in 9.2 quintillion, assuming every game is a 50-50 proposition, or about 46 million times the number of stars in our galaxy.<\/p>\n

But unlike Schellhamer, most people have some basketball knowledge. Factor that into the equation, Bergen wrote in 2013<\/a>, and the odds of going 63-0 drop to about 1 in 28 billion \u2014 or, roughly 96 times harder than winning the Powerball jackpot.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven in the women\u2019s tournament where the favorites predominantly advance, there are outliers, and it only takes one if your bracket leans into favorites,\u201d said Charlie Creme, the resident women\u2019s bracketologist for ESPN. \u201cBeing able to pinpoint just those two or three upsets, knowing they will happen, but just in such a small number, is the maddening part of perfection.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the ESPN competition, the quest for a perfect men\u2019s bracket ended Sunday night when No. 6 seed Tennessee beat third-seeded Virginia<\/a> 79-72 in the 44th game of the tournament. (If that hadn\u2019t done it, surely No. 9 seed Iowa\u2019s upset of No. 1 seed and defending national champ Florida<\/a> later that night would have taken care of anybody else).<\/p>\n

Still, that run of 43 consecutive winning picks broke the record on the ESPN platform for its men\u2019s contest.<\/p>\n

On the women\u2019s side, the NCAA found 235 perfect brackets among the major contests going into Monday, when the last games in the second round were played. That number fell to seven when No. 10 seed Virginia<\/a> beat second-seeded Iowa in double overtime. When No. 6 seed Notre Dame<\/a> knocked off third-seeded Ohio State, Schellhammer was the last one left.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first game I watched of March Madness was on Monday,\u201d Schellhammer said. \u201cI came home and I was like, \u2018I\u2019ll check and see how my women\u2019s bracket is doing.\u2019 Then I watched Virginia beat Iowa, and that was pretty cool. And then I watched Notre Dame.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schellhammer still has a long way to go: The best start in the ESPN women\u2019s competition is 57 correct picks, which happened last year. To beat that, he would need to win each of the Sweet 16 games on Friday and Saturday to reach 56-0, and then win the first two games in the Elite Eight starting Sunday \u2014 though at that point, why not just win \u2018em all?<\/p>\n

Schellhammer mostly stuck with the favorites in the opening weekend, though picking Virginia to beat Iowa was a big upset.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s sticking with the favorites through the Sweet 16, too, but then Schellhammer is going out on a mighty long limb: He predicts No. 3 seed TCU will beat the Cavaliers on Saturday night, then knock off No. 1 seed South Carolina, the three-time national champions and the fourth-biggest favorite to win the title again, according to odds from BetMGM Sportsbook.<\/p>\n

Even if Schellhammer wanted to, there\u2019s no turning back now. His bracket is locked.<\/p>\n

\u201cTCU and South Carolina is definitely one I would probably go back, and not to knock Texas but I\u2019d probably re-pick the championship, because UConn is a powerhouse,\u201d he said. \u201cYou never know. If there\u2019s ever going to be an upset it\u2019s going to be in March Madness.\u201d<\/p>\n

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