The exciting time of March Madness is finally upon us. March Madness is when the biggest NCAA college basketball tournament of the year is played. This tournament brings together the country’s top 64 basketball teams for a three-week tournament to crown the year’s kings of college basketball. The tournament this year has already resulted in some shocking upsets and some razor close games. 

The tournament started with the round of 64. The first round included many predictable wins, like number one seeds Gonzaga, Michigan, Baylor, and Illinois all winning their first games. Other predictable outcomes included the number 5 team, Colorado, beating the number 12 team Georgetown; the number 2 seed Alabama beating the number 15 seed Iona; the number 3 team Arkansas beating the number 14 team Colgate. This round also had an abundance of upsets that shook the tournament to the core. These upsets include the low ranked number 13 Ohio beating the higher ranked number 4 team Virginia by a score of 62-58. Another upset in this round happened when the number 15 seed and Summit League champions Oral Roberts beat the much higher ranked number two seed Ohio State 75-72 in overtime. 

The teams that survived this first round then moved to the round of 32. In this round, three of the number one seeds won their games and continued their way to the championship. However, in this round the first number one seed to lose out of the tournament was Illinois with a shocking 71- 58 loss against in-state rival Loyola. Another big upset was a 81-78 Oral Roberts win over Florida, which saw this underdog team unbelievably move on to the Sweet Sixteen. Although these were big upsets, this round did not contain that many more. Teams including Creighton, Alabama, Florida, Arkansas, UCLA, Villanova and Florida State were all ranked as higher teams and all won their games as predicted. The only other upsets to occur during this round were a  95-80 Oregon win over number 2 seeded Iowa, an 80-70 Oregon State win over Oklahoma State, and a 75-72 Syracuse win over the number 3 seeded West Virginia.

The talented teams left standing after the difficult round of 32 moved on to the Sweet Sixteen. The first game of the Sweet Sixteen saw the clock strike midnight on Cinderella-story Oral Roberts with a heartbreaking 72-70 to Arkansas. The second game of this round saw number one seed Baylor predictably beat Villanova 61-52 and continue their march to the championship. The third game saw the first upset of the round with the number 12 seed Oregon State beating Loyola Illinois 65-58. Oregon State is now the lowest seed left in the tournament. The fourth game saw another predictable win with Houston beating Syracuse 62-46. Another one seed, Michigan, punched their ticket to the elite eight with an easy 76-58 win over Florida State in the fifth game of this round. The next game saw yet another number one team in Gonzaga beating Creighton 83-65. The biggest upset of this game came when the number 11 team UCLA beat the number 2 team Alabama 88-78. The final game of this round saw Oregon lose against USC by a score of 82-68.

After this round only eight teams remain to move on to the Elite Eight round. These teams include Michigan, UCLA,  Gonzaga, Arkansas, Baylor, Oregon State, and Houston. I predict that of these teams Michigan, Gonzaga, Baylor, and Michigan State will move on to the Final Four. From there, I predict that Gonzaga and Baylor will play each other in the championship and Gonzaga will win and be crowned the champions of the tournament.

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