CHARLOTTE, N.C. — It was a big weekend for college basketball fans nationwide, especially in the Carolinas.
Not only did Duke win its 21st ACC Tournament Saturday over Florida State, the Blue Devils took the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament. The North Carolina Tar Heels also took a No. 1 seed, as did ACC member Virginia and Gonzaga.
And after Friday night's classic between Duke and Carolina, many fans are hoping for a fourth meeting between the rivals in the NCAA Tournament. If that's going to happen, the stakes will be higher than ever before because the schools separated by eight miles can only play again in the national title game.
As hard as this might be to believe, Duke and North Carolina have never met in the NCAA Tournament, let alone the Final Four or championship game.
So while fans are hoping for the ultimate rivalry title game, they're also thinking about filling out a perfect bracket. Sounds impossible, right? Well, it almost is.
According to many mathematicians, your chances of filling out the perfect NCAA bracket is 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808. That's one in 9.2 quintillion, by the way. Duke University math professor Johnathan Mattingly says you have a much better chance, though. According to Mattingly, the odds of filling out the perfect bracket increase to 1 in 2.4 trillion. It's all relative.
So, what's more likely than filling out a perfect bracket?
Winning the powerball: Your odds of winning are 1 in 292.2 million. The jackpot for Wednesday night's drawing is $550 million, if you're interested.
Dating a supermodel: Yes, someone's apparently done research on this. The odds of this happening are 1 in 880,000. Not bad compared to the perfect bracket!
Being struck by lightning: The odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 3,000.
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