Do you have what it takes to win it all?   

This month, as the American University men’s basketball team dances into the NCAA Tournament, campus community members can take their own shot at earning “One Shining Moment.”

During March Madness, AU Now is hosting a free bracket group open to all AU students, faculty, staff, and alumni. To join, fill out your predictions (one entry per person) before first-round action tips off on Thursday, March 20.

Eagles need not achieve perfection to win the title of AU’s basketball Nostradamus. Even still, tens of millions of Americans fill out brackets each year in the hope that they could be the first ever to pick all 63 matchups correctly.

At its core, bracketology is a math problem no one has ever solved. And odds are—even if the tournament continues for millions of years—no one ever will.

“It’s an astronomically small probability,” said Mike Limarzi, Hurst senior professorial lecturer in AU’s Department of Math and Statistics.

If you picked each tournament game based on a coin flip, mathematicians have calculated that you would have a 1 in 9.2 quintillion chance of getting them all correct. It’s more likely someone could successfully locate one particular speck of sand among the estimated 7.5 quintillion grains on Earth, according to the NCAA. (For context, a quintillion is 1 billion billions.)

But here’s the Lloyd Christmas optimistic outlook: If you know a little about basketball, your chances increase to 1 in 20 billion. While that’s still exponentially lower than winning the Powerball jackpot or being struck by lightning twice during your lifetime, math can’t explain everything in sports.

“An important thing to remember about probability is it’s not trying to predict the next event,” Limarzi said. “A lot of times, we fall for this trick. Humans are not coin clips. That’s the reason why we watch sports—we never really know what’s going to happen.”

Prognosticators once thought a No. 16 seed could never beat a No. 1 seed in the tournament. Up until 2018, they were right, as top seeds boasted a 135–0 record in the first round. Then, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, took down the University of Virginia—the overwhelming favorite to win the national championship. In 2023, No. 16 Fairleigh Dickinson followed suit, beating No. 1 Purdue.

You, too, could beat the odds. But only if you decide to give it a shot.

Sign up for AU’s bracket challenge.