The Madness is coming

By Shaun Goodman, Managing Editor and Multimedia Director

In just a little more than a week, the best NCAA college basketball teams will compete in the annual, thrilling tournament that dates back to 1939. Starting at 68 teams, 67 teams get eliminated until there’s only one, the championship team.

It’s an understatement to say people aren’t already getting excited to see rim-breaking dunks, clutch buzzer beaters and amazing underdog stories.

Last year, the craziness of March Madness was off the charts. Some of the best moments we witnessed included No. 12 seeded Yale’s Makai Mason, who displayed his sheer talent of scoring with 31 points in their upset of the No. 5 seeded Baylor, making the game Yale’s first tournament victory in school history.

No one could forget Villanova’s Kris Jenkins’s game-winning three-pointer to beat North Carolina in the championship game, winning the NCAA title for the Wildcats for the first time in 31 years.

Photo courtesy of Maurice Ross (CC by-sa 2.0)
Kris Jenkins hits the game-winning buzzer beater to win the National
Championship last year.

Some reasons to get even more pumped for March Madness 2017 is the possibility of the unthinkable happening.

To this day, a No. 16 seeded team has never beaten a No. 1 seeded team, there has been no team to win the championship seeded lower than the No. 8 Villanova in 1985 and nobody has been able to fill out a perfect bracket; the chances of this happening are a one in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (that’s quintillion).

All the excitement and attention is now being put onto this year’s dance.

People all over the country will eventually fill out their brackets once the comittee determines the seeding, families and friends competing with each other to see who will have the most accurate bracket in their group.

That is what makes March Madness so endearing; everything for each team is on the line and up for chance.