March Madness is approaching us sooner than you would think. Another year of the tournament comes another year of broken brackets, tears, and thrilling underdog upsets.
Last year, Villanova won the final against UNC in a classic game with a buzzer beater to secure the title, and now they sit comfortably at fourth place; Gonzaga still reigns over them all in first place.
“Based on last years’ upset, I expect UNC to win. They are a good solid team with a historically good coach” said junior Calvin Pastel.
Arguably, the most thrilling part of the tournament is the upsets that no one expects, the underdogs that don’t show up on anyone’s radar. In the 2015-2016 tournament, one of the more memorable games was when the 11th seed, Northern Iowa, beat higher ranked Texas with a half-court buzzer beater to end the Longhorn’s shot at the title.
“I’m expecting Kansas to lose early, most likely in the first round or second round” said junior Tyler Dey, “I just don’t think that they have a good enough team to go all the way.”
According to USA Today, filling out a perfect bracket is really hard to do- almost impossible. In fact, your odds of filling out a perfect bracket, by making your picks randomly, is one in 9.2 quintillion. Should you have some knowledge of basketball, it dramatically reduces to a one in 772 billion chance. That’s still a very long way to go to get to the golden ticket of all brackets. Should a perfect bracket be filled out, you could potentially have the chance to win one billion dollars, courtesy of Warren Buffet.
“I feel like it could happen,” said Dey. “I mean with that money I could buy myself a car and take care of my mom.”
With the men’s tournament in motion, that means that the women’s tourney is in full swing as well. Almost to no surprise, University of Connecticut resides in first place having a so far spotless record of 22-0. UConn has a 98 game winning streak (and counting), including the post-season victories, with their last loss occurring on Nov. 17, 2014. That’s almost three years of perfection for them. They won the national championship last year against Syracuse by beating them 82-51. It’s safe to say that the program is looking for another championship.
“It wouldn’t be surprising if they won it again. They have are good” said junior Keagan O’ Brien.