March Madness continues with increasing mayhem

Jacob Nevis Sports Editor

It’s that time of year again when the madness starts to appear in college basketball. Each March, the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments are played between different Division 1 college teams. The tournaments run through April with each team trying to win the national championship.

There are 68 teams that qualify for the tournament, but four teams are eliminated before the tournament officially begins by playing other teams vying for a spot. This leads to there being only 64. Those teams are separated into four brackets (South, East, Midwest and West) and seeded one through 16 based on how the teams played in the regular season.

This year, the number one seeds for the different regions were Alabama in the South, Purdue in the East, Houston in the Midwest and Kansas in the West.

The first and second rounds of the tournament were played in the cities of Des Moines, Birmingham, Orlando, Sacramento,

Albany, Columbus, Denver and Greensboro.

The tournament is called “March Madness” for a reason. Each year, something unexpected is bound to happen. One of the biggest upsets of the weekend was 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson (FDU) knocking off oneseed Purdue. FDU is only the second 16-seed team to ever do this.

Another upset was eightseed Arkansas knocking off last year’s national champion, Kansas. Kansas was a favorite to re- peat, but the Razorbacks were able to defeat them in a close race, 72-71.

Along with there being major upsets, there is always a Cinderella story that seems to come out of the first and second rounds. This year’s Cinderella team is the Princeton Tigers.

The Ivy League school was put as the 15th seed in the South region of the bracket.

The Tigers played two-seed Arizona and upset them 59-54.

In the second round, they beat Missouri pretty handily, 78-

63, to punch their ticket to the Sweet 16.

The first and second rounds of the tournament concluded last weekend. The tournament will resume with the Sweet 16 on Thursday, March 23, as teams try to advance to the Elite 8. Some matchups to watch out for are Alabama vs. San Diego State, Florida Atlantic vs. Tennessee and Xavier vs. Texas. The Sweet 16 will be nothing short of thrilling as March Madness continues.

Editor’s Note: Go UCLA Bruins!