How Fans Have Fared in the ESPN Men’s Tournament Challenge After the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight 

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After the conclusion of this weekend’s Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight rounds of the NCAA Men’s College Basketball tournament, the entries in ESPN.com’s ESPN Men’s Tournament Challenge presented by State Farm and Sprint show that only 200 out of 5.4 million entries predicted Michigan State, Butler, West Virginia and Duke to advance to the Final Four.  An analysis also reveals:  

• 190,094 (4%) entries predicted Butler to defeat Syracuse in the Sweet Sixteen;
• 1,013,216 (21.2%) entries predicted West Virginia to defeat Kentucky in the Elite Eight;
• 288,708 (6%) entries are predicting that Duke will defeat West Virginia to advance for the Championship Game;
• Only 851 entries are predicting that Butler will defeat Michigan State in the Final Four. 

The nearly 5.4 million entries to the Men’s Tournament Challenge surpassed last year’s record of 5 million entries by 8 percent.  At the peak period, fans registered nearly 4,000 entries per minute (approximately 70 entries per second). 

Among the entries in Tournament Challenge this year was President Barack Obama, who current sits in the 55.8th percentile with a rank of 2,111,104 in the Men’s Tournament.  Last year, the President correctly picked North Carolina to win the Tournament.  His bracket ranked 903,125 overall, just above the 80th percentile in the ESPN Tournament Challenge. 

At the end of the Tournament, the Men’s Tournament Challenge entrant with the most points wins $10,000. The runner up wins $5,000. 

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