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Buffalo Grove man's NCAA tournament bracket is perfect no more

Dayton continued its Cinderella run Saturday night by beating Syracuse in the men's basketball NCAA tournament.

Back in Buffalo Grove, the outcome of that game ended another Cinderella run, breaking a streak of 36 consecutive correct predictions by Brad Binder.

Binder, who filled out his picks in less than five minutes, did pick Dayton over Ohio State. He also picked Mercer over Duke.

All in all, he said, it was a good run. How good?

“I got a lot of followers on Twitter,” Binder said Sunday, “and a lot of them were into the probability and the odds of it all happening. They said that it was, as far as they know, the furthest anyone has gone with a perfect bracket that has been documented.”

Binder, a graduate of the University of Illinois, works part-time as a physical therapy aide and plans to attend graduate school.

He did not enter the Billion Dollar Bracket Challenge, but “Brad's Breathtaking Bracket” is in the Yahoo Sports Tourney Pick'em Pool.

“I got a lot of attention on Twitter,” he said. “People were making me very aware of that. But I really didn't let it get to me too much,” Binder said. “My bracket isn't perfect anymore and one of my Final Four teams lost.”

His Twitter feed reveals he also possesses a good sense of humor, as well as uncanny basketball prediction acumen.

One tweet said, “And that was the closest I've ever come to not winning a billion dollars.”

Another tweet expressed his thanks but also carried a message, saying, “Thank you to everyone who supported me on my run. I had a blast. To the haters w/nothing good & everything bad to say — re-evaluate yourself.”

Binder said he makes out his bracket every year, but pointed out, “I never even came close to having this kind of success.”

This year, he had picked Michigan State to win the tournament.

“I'm a Big Ten fan, so I have watched my fair share of games against the teams in the Big Ten. Illinois played Michigan State twice. They did have one bad game against Illinois, but after that Michigan State got hot. They got on a roll. I think Gary Harris and Adreian Payne are great players. And I'm also a fan of Tom Izzo.”

His bracketological success garnered some attention from media outlets, landing him on “ABC World News.”

His mother, Marla Binder, said he handled the attention with aplomb.

“Brad's only 23, and this whole thing kind of came out of nowhere,” she said. “He has handled this whole thing — with all this media attention that none of us could have possibly imagined — like a champ. He has been so calm and cool and collected about it and really has remained true to himself.”

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