Every year, millions of Americans fill out March Madness brackets for the annual men's and women's college basketball tournaments, hoping to fulfill their unrealized dreams of selecting a perfect bracket. This year, one Pennsylvania 8th grader is over halfway to achieving that goal.
Fourteen-year-old Otto Schellhammer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has a perfect women's bracket through two full rounds of play, with 16 teams remaining of the more than 60 that started the tournament.
"The first round was mainly just pick the higher seed, and then the second round, it was all random," Otto told "Good Morning America" in an interview that aired Friday morning.
He added, "I just want everybody to know, this was all luck."
To this point, Otto has successfully made 48 correct picks, with 16 more picks remaining. The longest perfect women's bracket record was set last year, when someone logged 57 consecutive correct picks, according to the AP.
The most-perfect men's bracket came in 2019, with a 49-pick winning streak.
Otto's record of perfection so far renders him the sole survivor in the total pool of 41.2 million brackets across both the men's and women's tournaments this year, according to the NCAA and The Associated Press.
At school, Otto said, "It's all anybody can talk about. But it's been fun."
He added, "Everybody's been supportive."
Among his most important picks, Otto will need the Texas Longhorns, a No. 1 seed that won 33 games during the regular season, to dominate the rest of the tournament and win it all.
"I'm definitely pulling for Texas right now to bring it home," Otto said.
The tournament will continue Friday evening with the Sweet 16 round, as top-seeded UConn takes on North Carolina, Vanderbilt takes on Notre Dame, UCLA plays Minnesota and Duke faces LSU.
On Saturday, Texas will take on Kentucky, Michigan will face off with Louisville, South Carolina takes on Oklahoma, and TCU takes on Virginia.
The winners of those games will then tip off Sunday and Monday in the Elite 8 round, each team hoping to earn spots in the Final Four and National Championship rounds next weekend.
