The NCAA tournament has officially started to take over March. To start the first round with 64 teams, a big upset in the second game of the tournament when 6-seed BYU faced off against 11-seed Duquesne. Duquesne pulled the upset 71-67 to break over half of the worlds brackets. Then another big upset that night when 3-seed Kentucky lost 80-76 to 15-seed Oakland. Finally, the last upset in this round, with 14-seed Yale upsetting 4-seed Auburn 78-76. This is where even more brackets fell apart. There was no perfect bracket standing anymore.
In the round of 32, UCONN, Purdue, Houston, and North Carolina are still fighting to get a spot in the final four as the number one seeds. No big upsets would happen in the second round as most top seeds would make it through leaving us with 16 teams.
In the Sweet Sixteen, 11-seed NC State took out Marquette, 67-58, and 4-seed Alabama beat 1-seed North Carolina, leaving a lot of people in shock and eliminating the first one seed. Sophomore, Izzy Brugner predicted “NC State will win because they have a lot of really athletic players and they have dominated everyone they’ve played since the ACC tournament”. She would be right as North Carolina State would become fan favorites and keep their winning streak going into the Elite 8.
In the Elite 8, the heavyweight teams would meet up, like UCONN defeating Illinois 77-52. Going on a historic 30-0 scoring run to start the second half of the game, Donovan Clingan had an outstanding game. Clingan scored 22 points and 10 rebounds. Sports Broadcaster, TJ Rives predicted the winner will be UCONN because “They came into the tournament hot, and I liked their match ups against their opponents”. Freshmen, Brayden Kobel also has UCONN because of “To many front-court and back-court threats.”
Purdue also defeated Tennessee 72-66. Purdue’s star player Zach Edey scored 40 points with 16 rebounds. Leaving us with the Final Four. Which will have defending champion 1-seed UCONN vs. 4-seed Alabama and 11-seed NC State vs. 1-seed Purdue. The games will be played on Saturday, April 6th in Glendale, Arizona.
