To many sports fans, March is the best time of the year due to the College Basketball Tournament, better known as March Madness. Sixty-eight of the best teams in the country gather for a single elimination tournament in which eight teams have a play-in-game, narrowing the total teams down to 64. Each team is given a 1 to 16 seed. A lot of people—not just sports fans—fill out brackets with the hope they pick as many games correctly as possible. Due to the madness and tons of unpredictable upsets, fans really stand no chance in making all of these picks correctly.
For example, this year 17.3 million people in the world filled out a bracket. Through just the first weekend of play, not one person was left with a perfect bracket, and only one picked 15 of the final 16 teams. No one got them all right. A few years ago, we saw Florida Gulf Coast make a miracle run to the sweet 16 as a 15 seed, something that no one saw coming. Back when current Celtics coach Brad Stevens was coaching the Butler Bulldogs, he brought them to the championship in back to back seasons as a Cinderella team. Although these are all great stories and are considered big upsets, we have seen these sorts of things in the past.
In 135 tries however, we had never seen a 16 seed take down a 1 seed. Since the field of play expanded to 64 team in 1985, 1 seeds were literally 135-0 and it had only been a close call on a few occasions. The University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) almost didn’t even make the tournament as it took a last second 3-pointer at the buzzer to defeat the University of Vermont in their conference championship to get an automatic bid. UMBC was seeded the last overall 16 seed, which matched them up with the number 1 overall seed, the University of Virginia. In a 74-54 rout, UMBC became the first 16 seed ever to get out of the first round. It’s tough to really explain how much of a shock this was, throughout the game the common thought was that Virginia would make a run and take over. It was never close in the second half, UMBC controlled the game from start to finish.
Loyola Chicago is this year’s Cinderella team, an 11 seed who’s now reached the sweet 16. With that said, Syracuse has also done this as an 11 seed this year, however they are a lot more prestigious than Loyola and have made it this far time and time again. Florida State, a 9 seed, also surprised many by taking down the 1 seeded Xavier Musketeers in the second round. With multiple top seeds out so early, just about everyone’s bracket has been busted and I’m sure this will only continue as the tournament goes on. The door is open for teams like Kentucky, who appeared to be stuck in a tough part of the bracket, but now is the top remaining seed as Cincinnati and Virginia were both upset. When it’s all said and done, the Final Four will most likely be four unsurprising teams, but there’s still room for some big time wins from lower seeded teams.