March Madness ends with a predictable win after busting expectations

Florida+Atlantic+upset+the+number+1+seed+Purdue

Unay Ortiz

Florida Atlantic upset the number 1 seed Purdue

March Madness just ended with UConn’s Huskies winning the championship for the fifth time, providing a predictable ending to a tournament that was otherwise anything but that.

Out of more than 20 million brackets that were completed on ESPN”s bracket tracker system, only six of them predicted the actual outcome of which teams ended up in the final four spots.

March Madness is the playoffs of college basketball, which as the name states, is in March. It has four conferences: South vs Midwest and East vs West, in which the winner of the South meets the winner of the East, and the Winner of the Midwest meets the winner of the West in the Final Four, and then the winners of those matches move on to the finals with it being either South or East vs Midwest or West.

This year’s March Madness was … Madness. Every year people make a bracket where they try to predict the winner of each game of March Madness. This year over 20 million brackets were made and by only the 10th game there were fewer than 0.02% of the brackets that remained perfect.

This year had some crazy upsets with the biggest ones being No. 8 Maryland’s win over No. 9 WVU eliminating around 50% of the initial field, then No. 13 Furman’s upset over No. 4 Virginia absolutely ruining the brackets as it dropped the number of remaining brackets to 10% After two games. No. 7 Missouri’s win over No. 10 Utah knocked out half of the remaining brackets.

Later the same day No. 15 Princeton’s upset over No. 2 Arizona left only 0.12% of brackets alive. The final game that killed every last bracket was No. 16 Fairleigh Dickinson pulling off one of the craziest upset wins over No. 1 Ranked Purdue, as they became just the second time in history where a No. 16 seed eliminated a No. 1 seed.

That’s not all the upsets though there was so many upsets this year it seemed like a movie. No. 11 Pitt triumphed over No. 6 Iowa in the Midwest 1st round. No. 15 Princeton’s 2nd scored an upset win in the 2nd round over No. 7 Missouri in the South. No. 8 Arkansas’s upset over No. 1 ranked and defending champs Kansas in the West 2nd round. No. 7 Michigan State over No. 2 Marquette in the East, No. 5 San Diego State over No. 1 Alabama in the 2nd round of the South. No. 5 Miami won over No. 1 Houston in the Midwest 2nd round. No. 9 Florida Atlantic University over No. 4 Tennessee in the 2nd round of East.

And then No. 5 Miami triumphed over local favorite No. 2 Texas in the Sweet Sixteen of the Midwest. No. 4 UConn blew out over No. 3 Gonzaga who had beat UCLA in the previous round of the West. And then to finish off the Sweet Sixteen, No. 9 FAU upset No. 3 Kansas State in the East.

March Madness in the Final Four which happened on April 1st with No. 5 San Diego State from the South vs No. 9 Florida Atlantic University from the East, along with No. 5 Miami from the Midwest vs No. 4 UConn from the West.

The winner of those (SDST and UConn) played in Houston on April 3rd and got to cut down the nets after winning the championship. This was the first time since seeding started in 1979 that no No. 1, No. 2, or No. 3 seed was featured in the Final Four, It featured three teams who have never made the Final Four (FAU, SDST, and Miami) while UConn chased their 5th title in its history, which they did win.

One “Fun Fact,” is that this was the longest distance between 2 finalists in the history of the March Madness finals (2,851 miles) but if the losing teams of the Final Four had won it’d be the shortest distance between 2 finalists (51 miles).