With the NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament coming up, fans across the country are anxiously waiting to watch their favorite teams journey through bracket play with the ultimate goal of winning the championship.
The NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Championship is a single-elimination tournament held each spring in the United States, featuring 68 college basketball teams, to determine the national championship in the top tier of college basketball.
Held in March, it is known informally as March Madness or the Big Dance, and has become one of the most prominent annual sporting events in the United States. The NCAA has credited Bob Walsh of the Seattle Organizing Committee for starting the March Madness celebration in 1984.
The 68 NCAA Men’s Basketball teams are divided into four regions and organized into a single elimination “bracket”, which predetermines, when a team wins a game, which team it will face next. Each weekend cuts three-fourths of the teams, from a Round of 64, to a “Sweet Sixteen”, to a “Final Four”; the Final four usually play on the first weekend in April. These four teams, one from each region, battle it out in one destination for the national championship.
Last year’s Connecticut Huskies were the ultimate roller-coaster team. They started off the season with a record of 17-2, getting up to No. 4 at one point. They then lost all confidence as they went 4-7 to finish off the regular season. Many people thought and wondered if they Huskies would make it past the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Luckily for UCONN, they made it past the Big East Tournament and headed right to the championship. They continued their hot-streak that was crucial in their journey to the top. They reeled off six straight wins to cap off an amazing post-season 11-game winning streak to win the national championship.
“I think a lot of people were shocked about UCONN winning it all last year, but it is always fun to see a ‘Cinderella Team’ win it all,” said freshman Cole Hennings.
This time around, the madness started even before the brackets came out. Kentucky, Syracuse and North Carolina all earned top seeding for the NCAA tournament Sunday despite weekend losses that brought even more intrigue to the three-week, 67-game tournament.
Michigan State earned the other No. 1 seed and was the only one of the four top-billed teams to win its conference tournament. The Spartans defeated Ohio State 68-64 in the Big Ten title game — a contest widely viewed as the game for the last No. 1 seed.
According to past years, March Madness can go any which way. There have been teams that have made it from the bottom all the way to the ship, or the one team that is favored to win it from the start. It is only the few in millions that can actually predict how the tournament will start and finish.
“I am obviously rooting for Wisconsin because of my brother [Jordan Smith who plays for the Wisconsin Badgers] but I still love filling out the brackets and seeing if my guesses are even close” said junior Nikki Smith.
Tune in and follow the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament on your local television channels and watch your favorite teams climb to the championship held in New Orleans on April 2.
Allie Hirschberg is a Variety Editor for the The Spartan Speaks
