In most years, March Madness has huge upsets, crazy game-winning shots, and a lot of great, close games. This year’s March Madness so far has been almost the opposite. Not a single team seeded from 13-16 won a first-round game for the first time in almost 20 whole years. Also,there are four one-seeds in the final four for the first time since 2008: Duke, Houston, Auburn, and Florida. On the other hand, this is good for people’s brackets as most of the teams predicted to win ended up winning. The problem though is that a lot of people watch March Madness solely to see the huge upsets from the smaller schools.
The reason March Madness is so popular in my opinion because it has that anything-is-possible sort of feel. Like any small school could just upset a big school, and it’s cool to watch.”Lamont Burgess, a Groves senior, says.
People online have said that so far, this March Madness is missing the madness. The typical huge upsets and Cinderella stories have just not been happening this year. There are no teams like the 2018 11 seed Loyola Chicago that made it to the final four, or the 2022 15 seed St Peter’s that made it to the elite eight.
On the other hand, people may argue that no upsets in this tournament will lead to better games down the stretch in the tournament, which has actually proven true. Games like Michigan vs Texas A&M, Duke vs Arizona, Maryland vs Colorado St and Arkansas vs St. John’s have all been exciting back-and-forth games, and some even had exciting backstories. St John’s and Arkansas was a battle between two great rival college coaches who are both Italian, where Arkansas ended up prevailing. Arizona vs Duke was a revenge game for Duke after Arizona’s star Caleb Love knocked out Duke in the 2022 Final Four. Duke won, but it was a battle from Arizona as Love dropped 36 points.
Besides the games themselves, trying to create the perfect March Madness bracket is a big part of the experience. The brackets are also the sole reason that people who don’t even watch any college basketball can still participate to try and make the best bracket. Since it is usually so unpredictable on which teams will win and make it far in the tournament, people tend to come up with their own strategies to fill out their March Madness brackets.
“My overall strategy for filling out March Madness brackets is I usually just pick the higher seeds in most cases.” Eli Vandersloot, Groves sophomore, says. “But I try to research a few Cinderella teams that could potentially make Cinderella runs and upset teams. Also, when I am in a tie-up of who to pick, I just tend to pick the team with the better mascot”.
The funny thing is that most of the time, it is the “experts” who make the worst brackets, and the ones who just pick the teams they like will have more success. Unfortunately, this year the experts were right. Every team with the highest odds to make the final four made it. Both final four games came down to the wire, where Houston came back against Duke and Florida survived Auburn. In the championship, Houston was beating Florida the whole game, but a late run from Florida and clutch free throws by Florida’s Elijah Martin, led Florida to win the 2025 National championship.
