Of the millions of brackets entered in the Capital One March Madness Bracket Challenge, Poplar Bluff's Jace Littles finished tied for 16th. He was sixth out of 232,000 brackets in the Capital One group, fifth out of 251,000 in the CNN group and he won a group with 16,000 entries.
And it was out of sheer boredom that he discovered his less than one in a million bracket.
Like most people, Littles didn't spend much time filling out his brackets. It is a crapshoot. He knows it, you know it, everyone knows it.
"I really didn't think about it. I just kind of put it together and it looked good when I got done," Littles said.
A college basketball junkie, Littles knows these teams better than most and can back up his choices.
"I've seen them play and they've always been real good. They won it two years ago," he said of picking Villanova to win it all. "People like Duke and Kansas, lately they haven't been getting that far. So I didn't think either of them."
But still, his other brackets were terrible. He had Missouri, his favorite college basketball team along with Kentucky, winning in the first round in all of them. In his family bracket, he had Missouri beating No. 1 Xavier. Except the Tigers lost in the first round to Florida State.
So like many people, Littles stopped paying attention to his busted brackets. He didn't have No. 16 UMBC beating No. 1 Virginia, either.
Then he was watching the Elite 8 and grabbed his phone.
"One day when some games were on, I was bored so I opened my apps and checked everything. It showed me I was like 20th out of 250,000 people," Littles said.
After that he was paying attention, very close attention.
He didn't have Loyola-Chicago in the Final Four, but did have the Ramblers in the Sweet 16.
"I thought about that one," Littles said. "And I saw them play in the conference championship and they were pretty good. And I hadn't heard much about Miami this year."
He correctly picked five of the teams in the Elite 8, three of the final four and the national championship.
Even his tiebreaker guess of the championship score, 76-64, was awful close to the actual final score of 79-62.
Prior to the Final Four, Littles messaged his dad, Brock Littles -- who picked Michigan State or Kentucky to win the championship in his brackets -- about how well he was doing.
"My bracket was awful," Brock said. "I thought it was neat because he follows the game and I do too. We try to go to a college game or two each year. It was just kind of cool that he was doing well."
And so Littles finished in the top 10 in about 10 different groups and tied for 16th out of every bracket entered, 10 points behind the overall winner, and didn't win a dime.
"We weren't smart enough to have dad sign up," Brock said.
Littles, a seventh-grader, is too young to be eligible. You have to be 18 to win the prizes. He and his dad haven't done the math, but guess he might have won as much as $1,000.
Littles takes it in stride with a shoulder shrug. Sure, he would have been happy with a cool grand in his pocket, but nobody expected this.
"It is a crapshoot, but he does have the knowledge. That is what is kinda cool. He pays attention," Brock said.
For those thinking about having Littles fill out their bracket for them next year. He warns you, that bracket will probably be terrible, and it will probably have Duke and its monster recruiting class winning it all.