By Nicolás Andreu
March Madness is arguably the best tournament in sports, as it is the most unpredictable. Sixty-four teams are battling in single-elimination basketball games that create chaos and unpredictability. What makes March Madness special is the ability to make your bracket in hopes of creating the “perfect bracket,” which has never been done.
The odds of filling out a perfect bracket are 1 in 9,223,372,0366,854,775,808 (a number we can’t even pronounce). College teams like Duke, UCLA, and Kentucky regularly make it. For many, getting into dance takes luck and skill, as most schools need more talent and budget to compete with the powerhouses.
The tournament breaks down like this, 64 teams play, and only 32 advances. Then out of those 32, only 16 remain, also known as Sweet Sixteen. From the Sweet Sixteen goes to the Elite Eight and then the Final Four. The Final Four is the tournament’s semifinals and the Final Four winner’s faceoff in the National Championship. The matchups are decided based on seeding numbers which range from 1-16. The no. 1 seed would face the no. 16 seed and the no.2 seed would face no. 15, etc. The reason why underdogs thrive in this tournament is that there is no reseeding after every round. So, if a lower seed beats a top team, their path would be like a high seed, leading to easier opponents for underdogs. When an upset happens, and that team continues to win, they have coined the phrase “Cinderella Story.“
The Cinderella story is the term used for teams that defy the odds and make it to the deeper stages of the tournament. There are usually about 2 Cinderella stories per tournament, which bust brackets for most of the country. A few examples are in 2018, when no. 11 seed Loyola Chicago made it to the Final Four, or in last year’s tournament when no. 15 seed St. Peters made it to the Elite Eight.
March Madness creates chaos and excitement for anyone who enjoys basketball as we see the players and schools play for their personal goal of winning it all. The David v. Goliath narratives are present as big-budget schools compete with schools that barely have the equipment and talent to be in the tournament, making March Madness a great thing to watch this spring. At the end of the day, a powerhouse in college basketball could face a school that is their first time in the tournament, and the teams will play a 40-minute game to decide the outcome, which lies with uncertainty for those who play.
