It's called March Madness for reason Bro!!!

Dude...The first weekend of 2023 march madness

With another exciting Regular season and a round of conference championships, fans who were destined of creating the perfect bracket knew with certainty that the lead-up to the Big Dance would be an exciting march. From amazing game-ending finishes from Furman and FAU to another 16-seed upset (from a team who didn’t qualify for the tournament). The breakdowns of both rounds are exciting and also heart-breaking for many college basketball fans.

Round of 64

From the get-go, most bracket-making fans, like myself, were entertained by early back-and-forth games, game-winning shots from 13-seed Furman, and BIG man Zach Edey dropping to a 16 seed, the first round didn’t disappoint. The tournament started off with tough games like WVU and Maryland and Mizzou dominating a sneaking favorited team in Utah St. The South bracket had a wild style of games with Creighton taking down Terquavion Smith’s NC state, who were many bracketologist underdogs to win. Not to mention Princeton taking down the current president’s team to win it all, Arizona. But Princeton’s magic touch was shadowed by the craziest upset we have seen since the golden retrievers took down Number 1 Virginia in 2018. The FDU knights, who were put in the tournament due to the NEC tournament champions not being eligible for the tournament for not having enough years after being

transitioned into D-1 basketball, were able to upset the number 4 overall seed and NPOTY frontrunner Zach Edey. Other than big tournament bracket-busting games, the south bracket had 6-8 higher-ranked seeds win outright. The Midwest had many close but not-so-close games, with the biggest takeaway from that side of the bracket being Iowa States’ awful shooting performance against Pitt scoring a whopping 2 points until 9:45 in the first half. The west ended up having all of its higher seeds win out with one exciting late-game comeback from TCU against a high-scoring, electric #11 seed Arizona State.

Round of 32

To say the least, this was either heartbreaking or a dream continuing to say the least. The South to say the least was exciting and boring, SDSU and Alabama took control over two lesser opponents in their second game of the weekend making Creighton stunning #3 seed Baylor, all while the battle of the tigers went to the Ivy League champions against the Missouri Tigers giving Creighton a 15 seed in the Sweet 16. The South had the FAU Owls going against the 16th-seed FDU knights, who made a heroic attempt to beat the high-flying Owls but came up short. Tennessee and K-state shut down the low-seeded blue bloods with exceptional performances from Oliver Nkamhoua and Marquis Nowell. Tom Izzo showed his

true colors in March and put up a great performance against a powerhouse Marquette team. The Midwest had 3 evenly decided wins with Houston showing they aren’t afraid of anyone in their path. The West bracket showed a couple of big-time wins with UConn showing their dominance. And the young athletic Arkansas team defeated Kansas in a high-powered game, ending in Eric Musselman’s shirtless lifting up the enormous fan base of the Fayetteville Pigs, ending NPOTY Jalen Wilson and his Jayhawks with an early exit and no shot for a repeat of the National Championship.

The bracket has a lot of teams a lot of people didn’t expect to have in their sweet 16s. With that being said, the top two teams remain in the dance and many Cinderella teams are dying for their shot to make a run in this year’s big dance. We’re 3 days away from the next set of games and the bettors are dying to see what spread they’ll be taking this Thursday.