Alli Brackets: UVA fourth-year among last .01 percent with a perfect bracket

Allison Sheets, a fourth-year UVA nursing student, is heretofore to be known as Alli Brackets, a name that I’m giving her because she deserves it, by being among the final 0.01 percent of folks with a perfect bracket in the 2026 ESPN NCAA Tournament Bracket Challenge.

“I obviously have UVA winning the championship,” said Sheets, an Augusta County native and Fort Defiance High School grad, as we talked on Friday.

Obviously.

Love it.

Tennessee busted her perfect bracket with its win over Miami-Ohio.

May the ’Hoos avenge Alli Brackets on Sunday in Philly.

“I think that’s what makes it so fun. It’s like, obviously, growing up a huge UVA fan, and then getting to have this, and my dad’s a lifelong UVA fan, and then getting to have this experience of even getting to be a student here, which was just such a dream of mine,” Sheets said.

“And then, you know, just the friendships and experiences I’ve had here, and through sports, like we take, we took football very seriously this year, and we go to all the basketball games, and just getting to have that experience with the people closest to me has been so special. And so, at the end of the day, I’m always going to pick my team, and I know I I hope, and I know they’re going to, they’re going to push through for us and for Charlottesville and the Valley,” Sheets said.

I don’t fill out brackets when a UVA team is a high seed, because I’m going to do what Sheets did, and have the ’Hoos going all the way, which would have worked that one year, but the year before, we won’t talk about that.

Too soon.

It will never not be too soon.

Sheets was watching on Friday, like the rest of us were, as Virginia struggled to shake off #14 seed Wright State on Friday, eventually pulling away late with a 15-3 run to close out an 82-73 win.

“I will be honest, that game was, I was, like, wow, I’ve made it this far, that would be crazy if the Virginia game was the one that took me out, and that would probably be like a movie ending of my life as a UVA fan, because sometimes they do let me down a little bit,” Sheets said.

She’s been a UVA fan her whole life, but she’s early 20s.

I’m early 50s; they will let you down, and more than a little bit, is the lesson that will be learned, slowly, and painfully.

A perfect bracket means she got the one upset of the first round, #12 seed High Point beating #5 seed Wisconsin on Thursday.

The secret to that sauce:

“We all went, me and all my close friends, went to Charlotte to watch Virginia play Duke in the ACC Championship Game back in December. Had a great time, and some of my friends went and toured High Point, just to see what it was all about. So, I picked High Point because I thought that that was fun for them,” Sheets said.

I can see that.

She also got VCU beating North Carolina on Thursday night – “obviously always rooting for Virginia schools, but one of my best friends just got into grad school there.”

Sometimes, you just need to not overthink these things.

She knows the ACC well enough to know that SMU and NC State were fading down the stretch.

I wasn’t sure either of those even deserved a bid, personally.

Gotta admit here: I don’t know much about college basketball outside the ACC, because I spend so much time covering the ACC that there’s not much time to really know what’s going on elsewhere.

Which is why I wouldn’t have had High Point over Wisconsin, because my friends didn’t visit High Point when I was down in Charlotte for the ACC Championship Game.

I need to find better friends, apparently.

Her undoing was her reasoning behind Miami-Tennessee, which, gotta admit something again here – I would have done the same thing she did, and for the same reason.

“I saw a lot of people were picking Tennessee to beat UVA in the Round of 32 and I didn’t really appreciate that, so I wanted them to get out in the first round to Miami-Ohio. At the end of the day, it’s UVA. That’s how I picked my bracket. It was UVA first,” Sheets said.

I mean, like I said, I can’t argue.

I was in the arena for UVA-Wright State, and I’ll be back tomorrow for UVA-Rocky Top, but I’m a bit jealous of how Alli Brackets and her entourage are doing things.

“We watched the game locally down on The Corner, all of our friends together, and it was pretty electric when the game finished, and they played, you know, ‘The Good Old Song,’ and it was just a great vibe. And I think that’s what UVA sports and basketball are all about. So, that’s definitely what I appreciate it,” Sheets said.

Video: Alli Brackets

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