March Madness Review

March Madness is a college basketball elimination tournament in which 68 teams compete for a chance at a national title. The higher seeds (better teams) play the lower seed (not as good teams) and one team moves on for a chance to win it all. The championship game was on Monday”,”April 8th and the Uconn Huskies beat the Purdue Boilermakers”, with” the score being 75 Uconn to 60 Purdue. 

  Zach Edey was the scoring leader with 37 points in the game on Purdue. Zach Edey is a 7 ‘4 senior who carried Purdue to the championship averaging double digits and won the player of the year award “in” back to back years. Zach Edey went up against another talented big Donavan Clingan who is a 7 ‘2 center but was limited while against Edey only scoring 11 points. Avid college basketball watcher Evie O’Brien said “Zach Edey is one of the most dominant college basketball players that has played college basketball and is a huge reason for Purdue’s success “

Uconn won the championship in back to back years”,”which makes it the first time since 2007 a team has done that. Uconn has beaten every team they have played in the tournament the last two years by double digits with their biggest win being 91 Uconn to 52 Stetson which is a difference of 39 points and that is a huge point differential. March Madness watcher Benjamin Vazquez had this to say “No team was better than Uconn in the tournament and was the juggernaut of college basketball of the last two years”

Uconn’s path to the championship was an insane run beating Stetson 91 to 52, beating Northwestern 75 to 58, beating San Diego State 82 to 52, beating the red hot Illini 77 to 52, beating Alabama 86 to 72, and finally of course beating Purdue 75 to 60.

NC State was the Cinderella story (Underdog who went far) in the tournament with them going all the way to the final four beating out good teams like Marquette and Duke. They finally fell to Purdue 63 to 50. NC State was one of two of the final four teams which had a men’s basketball team and a women’s basketball team in the final four. The talk of NC State was their center Dj Burns Jr. who is a 6 ‘9, 275-pound senior was up and down during the tournament but his big game at Duke when scoring 29 points really caught people’s attention. NFL scouts were even looking at Dj Burns to play as a lineman in the league. 

Another Cinderalla who was eliminated early was Oakland who beat Kentucky but ironically lost to NC State. Jake Gohlke dropped 10 three-pointers against Kentucky and 32 points in total. He was on a 10-20 50% three-point percentage and was the talk of the first weekend of the tournament. 

Uconn was definitely the main talk of the tournament but teams like the Illini also were who reached the elite 8/the sweet sixteen for the first time since 2005. Marcus Domask also got a triple-double in the tournament which is the first Illini to do that and only one of 9 to ever do that. It was certainly an impressive run for the Illini with them also winning the Big Ten tournament beating Wisconsin. Avid college basketball watcher Gavin Brown had this to say “The Illini might have lost really bad that game against Uconn but they did a lot to get to the point they were at and had major success for the first time in years. The Illini losing to the most dominant team in college basketball should not define their season”