Feed the Madness: A Novice’s Perspective of March Madness.
The NCAA tournament, or March Madness as it is often referred to, has come and gone and as expected no one in the country ended with a perfect bracket, myself included.
For those who are unfamiliar, the NCAA tournament consists of 64 college basketball teams competing in a single elimination tournament until one team remains. March Madness lets anyone get in on the action by allowing viewers to make their own predictions on who will win each matchup and ultimately the tournament. Due to its single elimination style, one loss can spell disaster for a person’s bracket.
This year a few of my friends from my Fantasy Football league joined me in our own March Madness league to see which one of us was the best guesser. I should point out that none of us follow college basketball or particularly like basketball at all. Regardless, we figured we would give it a shot.
The tournament ended with UCONN beating the University of Kentucky in a thrilling championship game. The Final Four saw UCONN beating Florida and Kentucky beating Wisconsin. This differed greatly from my projections of Ohio St. beating Iowa St. and Duke beating Baylor, thus having Duke beating Ohio St. in the championship game. Unfortunately for me, Duke and Ohio lost in the first round of the tournament, Baylor lost in the Sweet 16, and Iowa lost to eventual tournament champions UCONN in the Elite Eight.
Out of the 6 people in my league, I ended up in 5th place with a total of 46 points. Unfortunately, I had UCONN losing to Iowa St. in the Sweet 16 and Kentucky losing to Kansas St. in the first round. In fact, none of us in our league had Kentucky or UCONN competing in the championship game. However, after the first round of games were played, there were zero perfect brackets in the country.
Regardless, this showed me that whenever you pick initially to go with your gut. I hope I will have better picks next year.
