This weekend’s Final Four will feature three teams everyone saw coming – UNC, Oklahoma, and Villanova were all #1 or 2 seeds – and one team that many felt shouldn’t have made tournament. But, just as Syracuse outperformed all expectations, Swarm Omega has risen to the top of our Beat the Swarm challenge.

Beat the Swarm features groups of all kinds, from expert sportswriters to rabid fans, in an attempt to see how different groups would handle the difficult task of completing a bracket for NCAA March Madness. But the best performing group so far is Swarm Omega, a small group combining a few members of three other swarms.

In fact, this blended swarm of 8 strangers is beating 97% of all individual brackets in the BtS Challenge, and has already defeated CBS expert Gary Parrish. In other words, at this point the Swarm has beaten the most famous bracketologist in the nation, and all but 3% of participants would have been better off using Swarm Omega’s picks to fill out their bracket than by going out it alone.

But how is this group of strangers doing so well? Each magnet you see below represents one member of Swarm Omega’s real-time input, and the motion of the puck reflects the collective wisdom and will of the group. Having correctly picked UNC and Notre Dame to meet in the Elite Eight, the Swarm was quickly able to achieve consensus around UNC advancing to the Final Four. 

It’s too early to say where Swarm Omega will finish in the Beat the Swarm challenge, but we’ll be compiling all the results as soon as the nets are cut down.

If you want to follow along or better yet, try UNU for yourself, just drop us a line below and we’ll keep you in the loop.