By Austin Shattuck a student submission
It is officially Spring; birds are chirping, weather is warming up and March Madness is upon us.
Brackets have been made with high hopes and within hours you have learned that all your hard work has gone straight down the toilet courtesy of college basketball. Every year myself and 20 million other people have fun making a bracket knowing that the possibility of having a perfect bracket is slim.
With this in mind, delve into my compelling story of how my bracket tanked in the matter of one day.
March Madness has been great so far and according to the people, the most intriguing game has been MSU-Marquette with 10.9 million viewers, according to AP News. With the NFL, MLB, and NBA mostly out of action, March madness had to step up, along with the WBC, and did with an average of 9.2 million viewers.
Over the years, making brackets has been a necessity for not only college basketball fans but also sports fans in general. “This year, over 20 million brackets were made,” Jeremy Willis stated. “And not one of them made it out of the first round.”
According to the NCAA website, in 2019, a bracket made by Gregg Nigil from Ohio saw a green check mark on his bracket 49 times in a row. In game 50, Purdue ended up escaping with an OT win against the heavily favored Tennessee Volunteer’s.
Now, knowing that no one’s bracket is safe this year, don’t you want to know what happened with my bracket?
I made one bracket through the ESPN app thinking that this would be my year to break Gregg’s record. On the other hand, I made four brackets through the March Madness app, picking Alabama to cut the nets down in Houston.
For my ESPN bracket I started out 5/5 with wins from Maryland, Furman, Missouri, Kansas, and Alabama. Out of all 5 of these games the game I was on the edge of my seat the most was Furman vs Virginia.
Virginia controlled the game for about 35 minutes but then came Furman’s full court press. In the end, Kihei Clark, the Virginia guard, threw the ball like a QB right to the Furman defender which eventually lined up a JP Pegues 3 pointer.
The next four games I ended up going 0/4 with a failed Charleston upset, an actual Princeton upset, an Arkansas win over Illinois, and an Auburn win over Iowa.
Arkansas and Auburn proved that they belong in March Madness by scavenging on 2 of the 8 BIG 10 teams in Iowa and Illinois. The rest of Thursday night I was at ease going 7/7 with dominating wins by all seven teams.
Duke handled Oral Roberts extremely well, Northwestern beat Boise State with their offensive firepower, Texas overwhelmed Colgate, Houston did the same with Northern Kentucky, Tennessee escaped the upset, by avoiding a late surge from the Ragin Cajuns, UCLA handled UNC Asheville easily while Penn state beat up on Texas A and M.
On Friday, I ended up going for a respectable 12/16. The key bracket buster on this day was FDU, the 16 seed, over Purdue, the 1 seed. There were so many storylines in this game but the biggest one was Purdue being the tallest team and FDU being the shortest team in D-1 basketball.
On Saturday, there were less games, officially starting the Round of 32, which meant there were less chances to avoid upsets. A 3 for 8 day was a bad way to start the weekend with Princeton, Arkansas, and Tennessee winning their games, respectively.
When Kansas lost, I almost threw my shoe at the tv, as I knew from that point on, I was going to just cheer for upsets.
On Sunday, my bracket was so screwed up that I did not even pay attention to the bracket, but paid a ton of attention to MSU’s upset over Marquette. Tom Izzo coached a great game, knowing that March was his month anyway.
With all that went on with the campus of MSU, I think win or lose from here on out, is a success. Izzo was a significant role model to all the Spartans that showed grief.
With Sweet 16 games beginning not very many teams I had in my bracket advancing were still in the picture. I put in my mind that I was just going to sit back and enjoy watching MSU make a long tournament run.
Knowing that it will have to be a miracle for a perfect bracket to come up, many people randomize their picks just to have fun and see where they end up. As for this year, there are no perfect brackets left, so we will all have to wait until next year to possibly go all the way.
