March Madness Mania

March Madness

Photo Credits: BullScore.com

By Nicholas Wright

The start of March means a lot of different things. It is the time of year that clovers start appearing as decor,the shamrock shake makes its return to McDonalds,St. Patricks Day green is worn by many, and most important of all, March Madness!

March Madness has been a staple of March since 1939. It is a college basketball tournament that first consisted of 8 teams. It made its debut on March 17th and ended March 27th. The final two teams were Oregon and Ohio State. Oregon beat Ohio State to become the first ever NCAA champions. Now every year, the NCAA has this tournament in March. Over the years the NCAA expanded due to the many schools that built successful basketball programs. . This year, there will be 68 teams for the men’s league and 64 teams for the women’s league.March Madness will begin on March 14th this year with the final match up scheduled to take place on April 3rd.The first 4 games will be played in Dayton, Ohio and the final 4 will take place in Houston Texas.

The games are organized in a series of elimination brackets, starting with 64 teams, and then quickly decreasing to 32, the sweet 16, the elite 8, the final 4, and finally, ending with the the national championship. Winning the championship is the ultimate prize for colleges and gives players a chance to be recognized by the NBA. The average audience that tunes in live each game is 10.7 million people. This number keeps rising as the tournament reaches the finals. For example, last year when Kansas played University of North Carolina in the finals there were 18.1 million viewers.

The UCLA Bruins have won 11 championships, but the North Carolina Tar Heels have the most Final Four appearances with 20. I decided to do some I asked a few of of Pinelands biggest basketball fans,, sophomore, Ty Kline said ¨I'm most excited for a lot of big upsets from the low major schools beating high major schools.” He continued to say, “my favorite school going in is Syracuse and hopefully we make it. I think we might go against Texas in the finals, and I'm excited to watch the first round. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of good match ups, and I plan on watching as many matches as I possibly can.¨ A lot of people predicted Duke or Oregon to come out on top.. Senior Connor Bonicky said they think the finals will be UCLA vs Alabama. I think they should stick to football when it comes to predictions.

Regardless of who you want to win, It is gonna be a very good year of March Madness match ups.