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Villanova falls to Wisconsin, takes all the brackets with it

Twitter is in mourning after the Badgers upset last year's reigning champs, leaving the CBS and ESPN brackets looking like Swiss cheese.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper

How are those March Madness brackets working out for you? Not looking so good after Saturday, when top-ranked Villanova was knocked out by No. 8 seed Wisconsin in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

Villanova, last year's champion, is going home, and plenty of tourney brackets went through Wisconsin's cheese grater. CBS Sports announced no perfect brackets were left in its competition after the Villanova loss. ESPN had two perfect brackets left after that game, but by the end of the day, both had suffered a loss.

Nova fans were bumming out.

But they were going mad in Madison.

Wisconsin even busted out the rehash of Crying Piccolo Girl, aka Roxanne Chalifoux, whose tearful image became a meme when Villanova lost in the 2015 tournament.

Although Chalifoux seemed to be taking it well, sharing an image from happier days for Nova in 2016.

While for everyone else, it was all about the brackets.

Or at least about our great national tradition of hating Duke.

Pace yourself, fans. There are still more than two weeks to go.

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