March Madness is done and it seems almost anti-climactic. A 1 seed vs 1 seed final, with a 1 seed winning. Even though it was great to watch March Madness, looking back, this could be one of the worst March Madness tournaments in recent years. Here’s why.
In the Round of 64, there were a couple of upsets, with 14-seed Oakland winning against 3-seed Kentucky, and 13-seed Yale winning against 4-seed Auburn. Some other notable upsets were 11-seed Duquesne winning over 6-seed BYU, 12-seed Grand Canyon winning against 5-seed Saint Mary’s, and 11-seed NC State winning against 6-seed Texas Tech. This seemed like a great start to the tournament, with lots of upsets in the first round, leading to very exciting and close games. This theme of upsets soon stopped.
In the second round of the tournament, the favorite in the matchup was king. Only 3 lower-seed teams won in 16 games, leading to many high-seeds moving on. The only true outlier in this spot was 11-seed NC State, who eventually went on the make a Final Four run.
The last big upset came in the Elite 8 when Alabama beat UNC to move on to the Final Four. This set the stage for UConn vs Alabama and NC State vs Purdue. At the end of these games, both UConn and Purdue moved on, leading to a one-seed matchup for the final. This is only the ninth time in history that this has happened, with the last time happening in 2017.
In the UConn vs Purdue final, UConn dominated, winning by 15 points and solidifying themselves as one of the best teams in college basketball history. Zach Edey, the 7’4” center from Purdue tried his best to carry his team to the win, scoring 37 points with 10 rebounds, but it wasn’t enough to hold UConn. In the end, it was the amazing depth UConn had that won them the game, with 4 players scoring double digits to carry their team to victory.
Even with it being a down year for the tournament, it was still fun to watch, and I know I watched as many games as possible. But now, March is over, and we will have to wait another year for the best tournament in sports history to come around again.
