Nine models entered the tournament. Eight are dead. The Auto Researcher is the last one standing.
Michigan 91, Arizona 73. UConn 71, Illinois 62. Two semifinal games. Two more champion picks buried. The Optimizer and The Super Agent both bet their brackets on Illinois winning it all. Illinois didn't even make it competitive.
One model picked Michigan as champion. One model still has a pulse. Tonight, it either wins the whole thing or it doesn't.
Leaderboard After the Final Four
- The Quant -- 1050 pts (250 + 240 + 240 + 160 + 160) -- champion eliminated
- The Historian -- 1040 pts (260 + 220 + 240 + 160 + 160) -- champion eliminated
- The Scout -- 1030 pts (270 + 240 + 200 + 160 + 160) -- champion eliminated
- The Scout Prime -- 1030 pts (270 + 240 + 200 + 160 + 160) -- champion eliminated
- The Auto Researcher -- 990 pts (270 + 240 + 160 + 160 + 160) -- champion alive (Michigan)
- The Agent -- 810 pts (270 + 260 + 200 + 80 + 0) -- champion eliminated
- The Chaos Agent -- 710 pts (270 + 200 + 160 + 80 + 0) -- champion eliminated
- The Optimizer -- 700 pts (260 + 200 + 160 + 80 + 0) -- champion eliminated
- The Super Agent -- 680 pts (260 + 180 + 160 + 80 + 0) -- champion eliminated
Five models correctly had Michigan reaching the championship game. The Quant, The Historian, The Scout, The Scout Prime, and The Auto Researcher all picked Duke vs. Michigan in the championship -- the only difference being The Auto Researcher picked Michigan to win it. Those five each earned 160 Final Four points. The other four models had no one left in the building.
Michigan 91, Arizona 73 -- The Wolverines Won't Stop Scoring
Michigan has now scored 90 or more points in five consecutive tournament games. That has never happened before in NCAA tournament history. Not once. The Wolverines put up 101 on Howard, 95 on Saint Louis, 90 on Alabama, 95 on Tennessee, and now 91 on Arizona. They are averaging 94.4 points per game in this tournament.
Aday Mara led the way again with 26 points and 9 rebounds, controlling the paint against Arizona's front line. The game was 45-32 at the half and never got closer than 14 in the second. Arizona, the last remaining 1-seed from the other side of the bracket, had no answer for Michigan's offense.
Six models had Arizona winning the West region. All six were right. But only five had Michigan waiting on the other side -- and only one picked Michigan to beat whoever showed up.
UConn 71, Illinois 62 -- The Dynasty Keeps Going
UConn is heading to its third championship game in four years. The Huskies suffocated Illinois's offense from the opening tip, holding the Illini to 38% shooting and forcing 14 turnovers. Illinois rallied in the second half, cutting the deficit to 5 with eight minutes left, but UConn answered every run. The defense that carried them past Duke on a buzzer-beater carried them again when it mattered.
Here's the thing about UConn: not a single model predicted this. Zero of nine had UConn reaching the championship game. Every methodology -- Monte Carlo simulations, archetype matching, matchup analysis, upset detection, autonomous research, ML ensembles -- all nine independently decided UConn would lose before the Final Four. Eight models had Duke winning the East. One had Houston from the other side of the bracket. UConn was invisible to every algorithm in the field.
And now UConn is playing for a national championship. Again.
Two More Champions Fall
The Optimizer and The Super Agent entered the Final Four with Illinois as their championship pick. Both had identical paths: Illinois over Purdue in the title game. Both were wrong about Purdue (eliminated in the Elite Eight by Arizona) and now wrong about Illinois.
The Optimizer was built to maximize ESPN bracket pool scoring, not predict individual games. It found expected-value edges and exploited them. Illinois as champion was a calculated gamble -- a 3-seed with enough upside to pay off the 320-point championship bonus if it hit. It didn't hit.
The Super Agent trained on a decade of tournament data across three research iterations. Its logistic regression model identified Illinois as the most likely champion given historical patterns. The model was disciplined. The model was methodical. The model was wrong.
Eight of nine champions are eliminated. The only survivor is The Auto Researcher's Michigan pick.
The Auto Researcher: 60 Points Back, 320 Points to Play
The math is simple. The Auto Researcher sits at 990 points, 60 behind The Quant's 1050. If Michigan wins tonight, The Auto Researcher scores 320 championship points for a total of 1310. That would be first place by 260 points -- the largest margin of the tournament.
If Michigan loses, The Auto Researcher finishes at 990 and The Quant wins the leaderboard at 1050. Every other model is locked in. No more points to earn for anyone except The Auto Researcher.
The Auto Researcher was built differently than the other eight models. It ran an autonomous research loop that tested 21 different prediction strategies against 14 years of tournament data, training an ML ensemble on 827 historical games, then optimized its bracket through Monte Carlo simulation. No human prompting. No methodology prescribed. Just: find the best bracket.
It found Michigan.
The Identical Twins: A Final Update
The Scout and The Scout Prime are still tied. 1030 points each. Both had Duke vs. Michigan in the championship. Both picked Duke. Both earned 160 Final Four points for Michigan making it. Both missed UConn. Both are at exactly 1030.
Five rounds. 62 games scored. The model built on 6 data points per team and the model built on 30 data points per team produced identical brackets, identical results, and identical scores. The experiment is conclusive: more data did not produce different predictions.
Championship Preview: Michigan (1) vs. UConn (2)
Tonight, 8:50 PM ET.
Michigan is the best offensive team in the tournament. UConn is the best defensive team in the tournament. Michigan has scored 90+ in five straight. UConn held Duke to 72, Michigan State to 63, and Illinois to 62. Something has to give.
For the leaderboard: only The Auto Researcher has anything riding on this game. A Michigan win crowns it the overall champion from 5th place. A UConn win means The Quant takes the title despite losing its own champion in the Elite Eight -- winning on depth of early-round picks rather than a championship call.
Eight models are done. One is still breathing. The Auto Researcher bet everything on Michigan. Tonight we find out if the machine that trained itself was smarter than the eight that were told what to think.
Check the dashboard for the full leaderboard breakdown, or visit the brackets page to see every model's championship picks.