DAY ONE: THE MADNESS IS ALREADY MAD

To the 27 of you who somehow lost to a coin flip — welcome to the 2026 Mimosa March Madness Pool.

Sixteen games. Six upsets. One historically terrible half from the overall #1 seed in the country. Zero perfect brackets in this pool (and only about 14,000 left out of 36 million nationally). In other words: the tournament is working exactly as intended, and your bracket is already on life support.

Anyway, let's talk about it.

DUKE: ALMOST MADE HISTORY (THE BAD KIND)

Let's talk about Duke, the overall #1 seed in the tournament, a 33-2 team that very nearly became only the third #1 seed to ever lose to a #16. Siena — a MAAC school whose most notable alumnus is probably someone's dentist — led Duke by 11 at halftime, 43-32. That is not a typo. The Saints scored 22 points in the paint in the first half while the Blue Devils sleepwalked through twenty minutes of basketball without Patrick Ngongba II.

Duke eventually woke up in the second half, as Siena's starters played without a single substitution until the final 90 seconds and predictably ran out of gas. Cameron Boozer had 22 and 13 to rescue the day. Final: Duke 71, Siena 65. But Siena had a three-point look with 28 seconds left to make it a one-point game. The Blue Devils survived, but if you've got Duke going deep in your bracket -- which is basically all of us --  this was a bit of a gut check.

HIGH POINT: THE LITTLE PROGRAM THAT COULD

Fun fact: Chase Johnston, who entered the game 0-for-4 from two-point range on the entire season, hit the go-ahead layup with 11.7 seconds left to give 12-seed High Point the 83-82 upset over 5-seed Wisconsin. His first 2-point field goal of the year, and he picked a pretty good time to make it. Three Panthers had double-doubles, and coach Flynn Clayman went scorched earth afterward, calling out power conference teams for refusing to schedule mid-majors. Frankly, the dude might have anger issues, because he was as pissed off as I've ever seen from someone that just won a big game.  Anyway, moving on...

SLU: THE BILLIKENS HIT 102

For those of you who've been asking "WTH is a Billiken anyway?" (that's an actual bracket name in our pool, sitting at 82 points), allow Saint Louis to educate you. SLU scored 102 points in a demolition of Georgia, becoming only the third first-round team to ever crack the century mark. The Billikens went on a 21-0 run that started in the first half and continued into the second, had five players in double figures, and shot 58.3% from the floor. The local squad put on a show. One of our own, BrackeZOUlogy, picked SLU in the Final Four — bold, deranged, and suddenly looking less crazy than it did 24 hours ago.

CELEBRITY & FUN BRACKET SHOWDOWN

The Best

Bugs Bunny is in 18th place. Read that again. A cartoon rabbit is outperforming 296 of you. Bugs sits at 100 points, comfortably ahead of every single ESPN analyst, every celebrity, and the vast majority of people in this pool who claim to know things about basketball. What's up, doc? Apparently your bracket game, that's what.

Hannah Storm at 90 points (53rd) is quietly having the best human celebrity day, while Snoop Dogg at 85 (83rd) is doing what Snoop does — just coasting along, relaxed, probably picking teams based on vibes and it's working.

The Worst

Andy Katz — a man who covers college basketball for a living — scored 44 points, landing him in 308th place. He is being outperformed by the Mascot Bracket, Bad Luck Brian, a coin flip, Air Bud, and a dermatologist who pops zits on camera. Truly a masterclass in humility.

Puka Nacua (38 points, 311th) picked BYU — where he went to school — as his national champion. Loyalty over logic, and it shows. Puka's bracket is only beating Whiskey, Holloway's Weed LLC, and the Confucius bracket. That's it. That's the list.

President Obama at 55 points is barely outpacing the coin flip, proving that the former leader of the free world and a quarter have roughly the same basketball acumen this year.

Our beloved McNeese superfan and human mascot, Amir Aura Khan, scored 77 points (131st place) which is honestly pretty respectable. But here's the thing: Amir picked McNeese to win the national championship. The Cowboys lost to Vanderbilt in the first round, 78-68. Which means Amir's bracket is now mathematically dead in every way that matters. His champion, his runner-up dreams, his whole reason for being — gone in game six of the day. But he rides for his Cowboys, and you have to respect the commitment. The McNeese Cowboys' TikTok mascot lived the dream for exactly one game. Pour one out.

THE ALTERNATIVE BRACKET REPORT

A quick check on our homemade methodologies:

FAMOUS ALUMNI (76 pts, 135th) — Not bad! Apparently having famous graduates correlates with basketball success more than you'd think. Or at least more than being President does.

RED STATES (54 pts, 282nd) vs. BLUE STATES (53 pts, 283rd) — In the most bipartisan result imaginable, both political brackets are terrible and essentially tied with a coin flip. America: united in mediocrity.

MASCOT BRACKET (63 pts, 233rd) — The mascots are middling, which is about what you'd expect from a methodology that once had a Horned Frog beating a Wildcat based on toxin secretion abilities.

ALL CHALK (52 pts, 288th) — Picking all favorites lost to the coin flip. In a year with six first-round upsets, chalk was a bad bet. Even the favorites didn't believe in themselves — just ask Duke at halftime.