by EDWARD PINTO Section Editor
The time has finally arrived. The second round of March Madness officially began on Thursday, March 20, and the race to the championship is tighter than ever.
The NCAA Tournament consists of 64 teams in the second round with one winner on April 5. On Thursday, March 20 and Friday, March 21, 16 games will be played each day leading up to the round of 32 starting on Saturday, March 22.
The four number one seeds this year are Florida, Wichita State, Virginia, and Arizona. The number one seed coming into the tournament was Florida, which automatically gave them a first place seed in the tournament. The other three teams had to prove it during their conference tournaments and during the regular season.
However, not all of these teams are guaranteed spot in the Final Four and usually only one of the number one seeds actually do make it to the Final Four.
Seeding is based on how teams did in the regular season, their schedule strength, and stats on how the teams did. Teams may go undefeated, but if their schedule is filled with lower division 1 teams, then they will most likely not be ranked high. If the schedule is tougher and teams have an average record, chances are they might be ranked higher.
“I’m so glad Virginia did really well this year. They beat Duke in the championship of the ACC Tournament, which was a great achievement. Last year, they didn’t do as well and I really hope they go far into the tourney,” said sophomore David Evers.
A huge part of March Madness is making tons of brackets and hoping to make a perfect one. The chances of making a perfect bracket are slim to none, about 1 in 9.2 quintillion, to be exact. No one has ever made a documented perfect bracket and there will most likely never be one.
That is why Warren Buffet, multi-billionaire sports owner, offered a chance for anyone to claim $1 billion for making a perfect bracket. As soon as he announced this, millions of people jumped online to try and perfect their bracket.
ESPN offered $10,000 if participants managed to make a perfect bracket with only 10 entries.
Some people around the country pooled money with a group of friends and whoever gets the most points gets all the money thrown into the bet.
“It’s basically impossible to make a perfect bracket, so I just hope for the best and pray that specific players on each team play well and don’t have an off day,” said sophomore Cole Huling.
The things that usually mess up people’s brackets are major upsets that should not happen, known as bracket busters. On Thursday, there were some upsets, which were mostly the number 12 seeds beating the number five seeds (Harvard, North Dakota State) and also number 11 Dayton beat number six Ohio State by one point.
What do you guys think about March Madness? Do you have a favorite team to win the whole tournament?
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