The University of Maryland Baltimore County's unprecedented upset over Virginia Friday — the first time in NCAA Tournament history a No. 16 seed took down a No. 1 — was so unlikely, so preposterous, so unthinkable, there was only one man America could turn to for an explanation: Barack Obama.

Though his time in the Oval Office is over like the Cavaliers' season, Obama carried on the time-honored tradition of filling out a bracket for March Madness. Like most everyone else, he had Virginia, the tournament's No. 1 overall seed, beating UMBC in the first round and advancing all the way to the national championship game.

Before the 74-54 loss, Virginia's official Twitter handle thanked Obama, a tweet that took on plenty of irony in hindsight and made its rounds on social media postgame.

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Just because I have more time to watch games doesn’t mean my picks will be better, but here are my brackets this year: https://t.co/ETRchPcZxF pic.twitter.com/gnNXw0Ysxr — Barack Obama (@BarackObama) March 14, 2018

Obama wasn't alone. Nearly 20 percent of all brackets on ESPN.com picked Virginia to win a title, much less to get past lowly UMBC (less than 5 percent picked the Retrievers).

UVa's tweet is all in good fun. After all, Obama won Virginia in 2008 and 2012.

Correction: This story orginally said Virginia's account tweeted following the game. The tweet was posted March 14.