PITTSBURGH — While most basketball fans are bemoaning those losing picks in their NCAA Tournament bracket sheets, one eighth-grader from suburban Pittsburgh stands alone with an unblemished record.
Otto Schellhammer, 14, owns a 48-0 record in the NCAA women’s bracket in ESPN’s Tournament Challenge, although he confesses that he does not know much about basketball.
“I know people say this a lot about March Madness,” Schellhammer told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “But it was 100% luck. I know basically nothing about any type of basketball.
“I play with my friends,” said Schellhammer, who plays lacrosse. “But I don’t really watch it.”
There will be no perfect men’s brackets in the ESPN promotion, the AP reported. That ended Sunday when when No. 6 Tennessee knocked off No. 3 Virginia and defending national champion Florida was upset by Iowa. That was 43 consecutive winning picks, second only to the 49-0 run in 2019.
Now, there may be a perfect bracket out there in a minor pool, but the NCAA tracks seven of the largest promotions and uses them as a yardstick, Mike Benzie, the senior director of content for NCAA Digital, told the AP.
This year they totaled about 36 million men’s entries and 5.2 million women’s entries.
Only Otto stands alone with a perfect record.
“I think it’s absolutely hilarious,” the boy’s mother, Amy Schellhammer, who actually did play high school basketball, told the AP. “It’s just so fun to see. It’s exciting. I’m excited he’s into women’s basketball now. He’s been watching and it’s making him more excited about it.”
According to the news organization, the late DePaul mathematics professor Jeffrey Bergen calculated the odds of a perfect bracket at 1 in 9.2 quintillion. That is assuming that every game is a 50-50 proposition; generally, that is not the case.
Unlike Schellhamer, many players in the March Madness brackets have some knowledge of the game or the teams involved. When one factors that into the equation, Bergen wrote in 2013, the odds of going 63-0 drop to about 1 in 28 billion.
That is 96 times more difficult than winning a Powerball jackpot, according to the AP.
Even the most well-thought out brackets can be spoiled by an upset.
“Even in the women’s tournament where the favorites predominantly advance, there are outliers, and it only takes one if your bracket leans into favorites,” Charlie Creme, the resident women’s bracketologist for ESPN, told the AP. “Being 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.”
Schellhammer picked No. 10 seed Virginia, which defeated No. 2-seed Iowa in double overtime. While there were 235 perfect women’s brackets heading into Monday’s games, it dropped to seven when the Hawkeyes scored the upset.
And when No. 6 seed Notre Dame topped No. 3 Ohio State, Schellhammer was the last person with a perfect slate.
“The first game I watched of March Madness was on Monday,” he told the AP. “I came home and I was like, ‘I’ll check and see how my women’s bracket is doing.’ Then I watched Virginia beat Iowa, and that was pretty cool. And then I watched Notre Dame.”
The best start in the women’s bracket is 57-0. Schellhammer would have to win every Sweet 16 game on Friday and Saturday and the first two games in the Elite Eight on Sunday to break the record.
And for the record, Schellhammer predicts No. 3 seed TCU will beat Virginia on Saturday and then will top No. 1 seed South Carolina.
Schellhammer has Texas beating Connecticut in the championship game.
“TCU and South Carolina is definitely one I would probably go back, and not to knock Texas but I’d probably repick the championship, because UConn is a powerhouse,” he told the AP. “You never know. If there’s ever going to be an upset it’s going to be in March Madness.”
© 2025 Cox Media Group
