Who won SwimSwam’s March Madness bracket challenges?

The NCAA Division I men’s and women’s basketball tournaments have concluded, with the University of Connecticut defeating Purdue to win its second consecutive title on the men’s side, while South Carolina beat Iowa to cap off an undefeated season on the women’s side in a tournament that set record TV ratings. With that, the results of SwimSwam’s March Madness bracket challenges have been decided.

Both of SwimSwam’s men’s and women’s tournament challenges saw an increase in participants from 2023. The numbers for the men’s tournament challenge went up from 143 to 269 participants, while the women’s tournament numbers increased from 59 to 85 participants.

On the men’s side, it was SwimSwam writer Anya Pelshaw who took home first place. Not only did she correctly predict UConn to win it all, but she also got all of her Final Four picks (NC State, Alabama, Purdue, and UConn) and the national championship game correct. She was in the 99.9th percentile of tournament challenge participants and earned 1650 total points — 190 more than any other participant. She finished 283rd out of the 22.6 million brackets submitted in the ESPN contest.

HeHateMeNow and Chris Coneeney tied for first place in the women’s challenge, with both users earning 1720 points and belonging in the 99.8th percentile of tournament challenge participants. Both users correctly predicted the national championship game and got three out of the four Final Four teams correct (Iowa, South Carolina, UConn), but picked other teams to make the Final Four over NC State. SwimSwam editor-in-chief Braden Keith was the highest-placing SwimSwam staffer in the women’s tournament challenge, finishing in 20th. He correctly predicted South Carolina beating Iowa in the title game, but had Ohio State and Texas making the final four.

For full results of the SwimSwam tournament challenges, click on the links below:

• Men’s Tournament challenge results
• Women’s Tournament challenge results

I did not do well with either of my brackets, going upset-savvy in a very chalky year for college basketball. I had Iowa State winning the men’s tournament and South Carolina making a Cinderella Final Four run, and both teams didn’t make it past the Sweet Sixteen. Meanwhile, I made the mistake of betting against Dawn Staley and the South Carolina women, picking them to get upset by Oregon State in the Elite Eight while penning Iowa as my national championship winner.