Round 1 of the 2026 NCAA Tournament is done. 64 teams became 32. And one Rithmm user called every single game. 32-0. Perfect.
A Rithmm user running the house model went 16 for 16 on Day 1. Then did it again on Day 2. Every game. Every pick. 32 for 32 through all of Round 1, placing them in the top 0.1% of brackets nationally. Only ~224 perfect brackets remain in the entire country. This is one of them.
The odds of a perfect bracket across all 63 tournament games are 1 in 9.2 quintillion. Nobody has ever done it. But going 32-0 through the entire first round is its own benchmark, and this user hit it running a model available to every Rithmm subscriber.
The overall bracket health across all Rithmm users after Round 1:
99% still have their champion alive
84% have both championship game teams still in
62% have all last 4 picks still standing
27% have every final 8team alive
3% have every last 16 teams still in the tournament
That champion number is the one that matters heading into Round 2. When 99% of Rithmm brackets still have their title pick alive after 32 games, the model is doing its job: identifying which teams have the structural advantages to go deep, rather than chasing upset narratives that don't hold up in the data.
The perfect Rithmm NCAAM model has Michigan as the national champion, beating TCU 78-72 in the title game.
The bracket called TCU over Duke in the second round, Utah State over Arizona, VCU over UNC, and High Point over Wisconsin. Stay tuned for more.
Our team tailed the bracket on Day 2 and put together an 11-leg parlay on DraftKings at +2943 odds. A $15 bonus bet that paid out over $440. Every leg hit. Kentucky survived overtime against Santa Clara. Utah State over Villanova. Texas Tech, Tennessee, Alabama, Iowa, St. John's, UCLA, Miami, UConn, and Kansas all covered.
When multiple independent legs built from the same model all land, that's signal, not luck.
Round 2 starts this weekend. The model is updated and predictions are live in the app for every game on the slate. The 32-0 bracket is still alive. Michigan is still the pick. The tournament is just getting started.
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