It’s a good year to be an underdog: What happened at March Madness and student reactions
Andrew Davidson, Staff Writer
March Madness is all wrapped up as of April 3. There were buzzer beaters, there were upsets and North Greenville University students loved every second of it.
March Madness is the NCAA division 1 national tournament for college basketball, and spans over the month of March every year.
It is a single elimination tournament comprising of 68 teams from all over the United States. Thirty-two teams receive an automatic qualification through winning their conference championship. For example, Kansas won the Big 12, Purdue won the Big 10, Princeton won Ivy League and all those schools were awarded a bid to the national tournament.
The other 36 teams are awarded an at-large bid that is decided by a selection committee. Most of these bids are given to teams from top conferences such as the ACC, Big 12 and Pac 12.
Before the tournament begins, the four lowest ranked teams compete against the four lowest ranked at-large teams to earn sports in the tournament. This round is called the first four.
Now that all the teams are set up, the tournament begins. The first round splits the 64 teams into quarters, essentially creating four mini tournaments. Once there are 16 teams left, it is called the sweet 16. Next round is the elite eight. Then the final four.
The winner of each side come together and compete for the national champion title.
Each year there are a few upset matches and an underdog team that makes it to the elite 8 or even the final 4. This year was no different.
#15 Princeton was one of the first to perform an upset against the #2 Arizona State. They went on to defeat the #7 University of Missouri, eventually falling to Creighton in the sweet 16.
#16 Fairleigh Dickenson University pulled off a massive upset against the #1 seeded Purdue University. They did not last much longer, however, because they fell to the #9 Florida Atlantic University.
FAU provided some underdog entertainment making it all the way to the final four, but fell to San Diego State in a nail biter 72-71.
“FAU and Sand Diego State both definitely were teams that surprised me when they both ended up in the final four. They were both teams that no one had anticipated being there,” said Jacob Brown, freshman.
While many were surprised with FAU and San Diego State, even more were surprised with FDU’s upset over Purdue.
“I thought that Purdue was going to roll over FDU, but it ended up going the other way. That was definitely the biggest upset of the tournament.” said Jorge Riesgo, junior.
Many students on campus were routing for Furman University, especially after their win over the University of Virginia.
“I was actually cheering for Furman and even went to their game against San Diego State in the round of 32. After Furman lost to SDS, I ended up cheering for them all the way to the championship game. I wish they would’ve won.” said Brown.
In the end, it was the University of Connecticut taking home the trophy after an easy 76-59 win over San Diego State.
It was an exhilarating month for college basketball fans, and many are looking forward to the competition next year.
