Investigations Begin After NCAA Brackets Leaked On Twitter

South Carolina Gamecocks coach Frank Martin received a very important phone call on Sunday while he sat in his team’s locker room watching the two-hour NCAA tournament selection show on CBS.

Investigations Begin After NCAA Brackets Leaked On Twitter

The call revealed that the NCAA bracket had been leaked on Twitter and that the Gamecocks’ name wasn’t on it.

“I was told that the first two regions were pretty much right to a T and that we weren’t in,” Martin stated. “I didn’t see it. I just heard about it — that it was revealed, posted or whatever.”

Martin seemed more upset that his team was not included than about the leak itself. “The leak? That is what it is,” he said. “But we set a school record for wins. We won 11 league games in a BCS conference. We lost to a conference tournament 6-seed. I’m not going to sit here and discredit other teams that got in over us, but I’m not sure what else we were supposed to do.”

This famous bracket has always been a heavily guarded secret. The 68 teams are typically not identified nor the matchups posted until after the selection show.

However, someone tweeted a bracket at approximately 6:30 pm ET on Sunday, about halfway through the televised show. The post showed the field of 68, cautioning “Spoiler Alert: full bracket.”

By then, the South and West regions had been revealed, and they were identical to the leaked versions.

Not everyone was entirely convinced that the leak was legitimate. Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said his players discovered the bracket — and that the Orange were included in the field as a 10-seed — via social media, but he wasn’t sure whether it was real or not.

“I don’t believe that stuff too much,” Boeheim said. “But we heard about it. Everybody knew about it. It was all over the Internet.”

A CBS spokesperson told ESPN that the network would provide no comment on the leaked bracket, while the NCAA said in a statement that it had started investigating the situation.

“We go through great lengths to prevent the tournament field from being revealed early, and the NCAA took its usual measures to protect this from happening. Unfortunately and regrettably, the bracket was revealed prior to our broadcast partners’ having the opportunity to finish unveiling it,” the NCAA said. “We take this matter seriously, and we are looking into it.”

At Pittsburgh, senior guard Sterling Smith set the Panthers at ease early in the selection show by sharing the leaked bracket that showed them as the 10th seed in the East Region.

This was the 35th selection show on CBS. The first show was broadcast in March 1982. The show was 30 minutes until 2001, when it was extended to an hour. This year’s was the first show expanded to two full hours. The No. 1 Seeds by region are Kansas (South), North Carolina (East), Virginia (Midwest) and Oregon, (West).