No perfect March Madness brackets left, and it’s all N.J.’s fault

PRINCETON, N.J. (CBS) — Fans of New Jersey teams are stocking up this weekend after two teams in the Garden State defied expectations.

Friday night, No. 16 Fairleigh Dickinson University beat No. 1 Purdue. That’s only the second time in history that a 16th seed has won an NCAA tournament game. The North Jersey school had the shortest team in the tourney, but they defended well and edged the Big Ten champions by 5 points.  

No. 15 Princeton beat the No. 2-seeded Arizona on Thursday night, and the women’s team followed it up with a down-to-the-wire win over NC State.

On Princeton’s campus, merch orders were coming in from all over the country and excitement was building.

Regardless of what happens in Saturday night’s game between Princeton and Missouri, the damage has been done.

There are zero perfect brackets remaining on CBS Sports, in part because no one expected these Jersey teams to win. They counted Jersey out and they found out.

One person who didn’t was Gov. Phil Murphy.

The governor had FDU beating Purdue and Princeton beating Arizona in his bracket. But his bracket was busted early when Furman beat the No. 4 Virginia.

The writer Harlan Coben, a New Jersey native, joked about the state’s teams messing with the tournament, too.

“That’s a nice bracket you got there. Shame if anything were to happen to it,” he tweeted Saturday.

CBS Sports had a little fun, too. After a photo went around Twitter showing a hole in the whiteboard in the Purdue locker room, the outlet posted another photo replacing that damage with the shape of the Garden State.