Of the 43 people entered, only one person had the predicted champion advance to the Final Four.

Say hello to Kerri Smith, who has UConn winning the title and, as such, the best chance to win our bracket. She’s in a tie for 19th place now, but will zoom to the top with two more UConn wins.

There are contenders for the prize. Darrin Hershman is in second place and has UConn in his Final Four. Ditto for WVPanic (tied for third), Jeff Simon, Karl Villacoba, Mike Birchenough (tied for fourth), Jeremy Hatcher (ninth), Kevin Stewart, Matthew Cookus and Monty Burns (ties for 10th).

I can’t think of a Final Four that’s as unlikely as this one.

Yes, Kentucky is good, but Kentucky had an unprecedented talent turnover this year. The Wildcats also needed a buzzer-beater to get by Princeton in the first round

Butler is a nice program, but it’s a smaller  program that lost its best player to the draft after a supposedly once-in-a-generation Final Four run. A return like this is supposed to take years, not months. The Bulldogs were also one shot away form elimination three times in their first four games.

No one in the history of college basketball won five games in five days to earn a conference tournament championship. UConn did that and has won four more just-as-difficult games. Remember, the Huskies were the ninth-best team in the Big East.

And VCU? The team didn’t even gather on Selection Sunday and figured the NIT would come calling later in the night. The Rams got that weird play-in game and have since made some really good teams look really bad.

How weird and awesome is this? Kentucky, UConn and Butler have won their 12 games by a combined 81 points. VCU has won its five by a combined 53 points. The four have played 25 games. Six were decided by double figures. VCU won four of those six.

It’s March!