March Madness Review

Introduction

March Madness, arguably the most entertaining tournament in the sports world, consistently produces controversy, underdogs beating favorites, and the key part: madness. Sixty-eight teams battle until one remains. The single-elimination tournament is split into four different regions. Each region is seeded from 1 (best team) through 16. This magical tournament wasn’t as magical this year but still produced great games. Today, I will overview this year’s tournament and go over what happened.

Pre-Tournament Controversy

Before you can play in the tournament, you have to get in. The NCAA committee allows all 32 conference champions and 36 at-large bids. The last four in is always a land of controversy, which is the last four at-large bids to enter the tourney. This year, West Virginia University was on the bubble between being in the tournament and not being in the tournament. Every major figure had West Virginia making the tournament, but they missed. People began to call the selection committee biased because the University of North Carolina (UNC) got the slot over WVU. With that over with, the tournament was set. The 68 teams were about to try to make their statement to the world.

First Four 

The First Four is between eight teams fighting to get into the tournament. Two of these matchups are 16 seeds (lowest seed) trying to get in the tournament and two are 11 seeds. The 11-seed matchup, Xavier vs. Texas, was the premier matchup. Texas gave themselves an early lead going into halftime but ended up losing it to Xavier after a second-half comeback. The four teams who won were Xavier, UNC, Alabama State, and Mount St. Mary’s.

Round of 64

The first round is the round of 64. Usually, the first round is a land of chaos in the tournament, but it lacked that this year. The biggest upset in round one was 12-seed McNeese State over 5-seed Clemson. Clemson was a favorite but was only able to score 13 points in the first half and lost by 18. McNeese State was able to take advantage of Clemson’s slow start and won by 2, 69-67, resisting Clemson’s late comeback. 11-seed Drake was the other team that pulled off an upset over a higher seed. 12-seed Colorado State also won over 5-seed Memphis, but interestingly enough, they were the favorite to win. 9-seed Baylor beat 8-seed Mississippi State by three in a nail-biting finish. 2-seed Alabama was able to push off 15-seed Robert Morris, who nearly pulled off the upset of the tournament. Another big matchup was Arkansas vs. Kansas, where 10-seed Arkansas was able to contain the explosive Kansas offense to move on to the next round.

Round of 32

Round two was more exciting than round one, but not by much. 1-seed Florida was able to come back against 8-seed UConn, preventing a major upset. The best game was 4-seed Maryland versus 12-seed Colorado State. Maryland shot a buzzer-beater after a finish that would make anybody’s heart race. 6-seed BYU was able to stop 3-seed Wisconsin’s comeback attempt and pull off an upset. The other 6-seed that beat a three-seed was Mississippi (Ole Miss). They dominated Iowa State throughout the game. 4-seed Arizona came back against 5-seed Oregon after a very slow start to get the win, and 5-seed Michigan was able to pull away from 4-seed Texas A&M. The biggest upset of the tournament happened this round. 2-seed St. John’s was beaten by 10-seed Arkansas because Arkansas held St. John’s to 28 percent shooting.

Sweet Sixteen

The Sweet Sixteen had the higher seed win across the board, but the games weren’t slouches. 3-seed Texas Tech played Arkansas in the game of the round. Texas Tech looked like they were about to lose and were playing very poorly. But a comeback that took the game to overtime allowed Texas Tech to steal the game. 4-seed Purdue played 1-seed Houston, where a bad inbound pass by Purdue lost them the game because Houston was able to steal the ball. Alabama shot a record 25 three-point shots to ride right past BYU, who didn’t play badly but didn’t have the firepower to match Alabama. 2-seed Tennessee dominated 3-seed Kentucky, and Florida bullied Maryland to punch their ticket to the Elite Eight. Duke bullied Arizona, but the score makes it look closer than it was. The opposite happened with 1-seed Auburn skidding by Michigan, where the score made the game look farther out of reach for Michigan than it actually was. 2-seed Michigan State vs. Ole Miss was a back-and-forth game that went down to the wire, where Michigan State was able to pull away at the very end.

Elite Eight

The Elite Eight was filled with games that went down to the finish or games that were boring. To get the boring ones out of the way, 1-seed Houston bullied Tennessee with amazing defense. 1-seed Duke shut down Alabama’s explosive offense to cruise right past them. Michigan State versus Auburn went down to the finish, though. Michigan State was very competitive but wasn’t able to upset the Tigers, ultimately losing 70-64. Later in the day, 3-seed Texas Tech was playing Florida very well, looking like they were about to take them down. Florida and Walter Clayton Jr. were able to sink many shots from deep to eventually come back and steal the game from Texas Tech.

Final Four and National Championship

The first game was Auburn versus Florida. These two teams met earlier in the year, where Florida dominated Auburn in their own arena. But Auburn was not going to let that happen again; they took a lead at halftime and were looking to win it. But they choked. Auburn played very poorly and allowed Florida to come back and win the game. The other game was Duke versus Houston. Duke was dominant the whole year and proved they would do that again. They were bullying Houston for 30 minutes and looked like they were going to win. Unfortunately for Duke, the game is 40 minutes, not 30. A trend in this tournament was teams making comebacks to win games. This one was no different. Houston’s final minute was perfect for them, and they were able to pull off the comeback. The National Championship was set: Florida versus Houston. Houston came out strong and bullied Florida with their defense. At one point, they took a 12-point lead. But like Duke, they only played 30 minutes. Florida started to take advantage of Houston not playing well and pushed themselves back into this game. Houston led more than 90 percent of the game, but in the end, they let Florida take it. Houston had one last chance to tie and go to overtime, but their last play fell apart. Ultimately, Florida won 65-63, claiming their first National Championship since 2007.

Overview

This year, March Madness had a lot of madness, but it wasn’t conventional. All four 1-seeds made the Final Four for the second time in history. People cheer for chaos to ensue. This year, the chaos was in all the comebacks made by teams. The chaos was caused by the lower-seeded teams consistently losing the leads they gained. People didn’t like that the tournament was mostly won by the higher seed, but it allowed for great games to occur in the Final Four. I personally liked the Final Four this year. I also wished for a little more chaos, overtime games, and buzzer-beaters in the previous rounds, but not everything I want comes true. In all, I liked March Madness this year, even though I hoped for a little more. The tournament is changing, and fans will have to adapt to the change too.

Works Cited:

ESPN Internet Ventures. (n.d.). 2024-25 men’s NCAA Tournament Bracket. ESPN. https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/bracket 
NCAA.com. (2021b, January 5). NCAA bracket for March madness. NCAA.com. https://www.ncaa.com/march-madness-live/bracket