March Madness 2014

Zahara Pruitt

March Madness 2014: The Year of Upsets

With the beginning of March comes the most exciting time of the year for college basketball fans everywhere. However, this year has been unlike any ordinary March Madness year.

To begin, the bracket was a much tougher one than normal. Normally, most first round picks are fairly easy to figure out who will come out on top. This year, that was not the case.

In my 18 years of existence on this planet, I have never before witnessed a more exciting first round of NCAA Tournament play.

There were many crucial upsets in the first round. My beloved Duke Blue Devils had a great regular season with freshman Jabari Parker tearing up the court. Parker is a NBA Draft prospect after only his first year in college. He led the team to the ACC Finals where they fell to Virginia, giving them the #3 seed entering the NCAA Tournament. They, however, lost to #14 seed Mercer in the first round. This was a great game and while Duke maintained the lead for much of the first half, Mercer was able to pull out the win over the Blue Devils, 78-71.

Other crucial first round upsets that negatively affected many brackets were Dayton’s win over Ohio State, Harvard’s win over Cincinnati, and NDSU’s win over Oklahoma.

However, with many upsets came many more very well played games. Although many were upset by their doomed bracket, fans everywhere were pleased to simply watch good games. Even the #3 seed Iowa State game vs. #14 seed NC Central was a good game. This was NC Central’s first time making it to the tournament and while most counted the Eagles out as a no-brainer loss, this eager team put up a tough fight.

Fast-forward to the final four and we see more upsets occurring. Florida was the favorite to win this year, but their luck came to an end with the UCONN game. The #1 seed ended up falling to the #7 seed.

The Wisconsin v. Kentucky game held a similar fate. The #8 seed Kentucky narrowly pulled it out over #2 seed Wisconsin in a 74-73 victory. That’s right folks, there is a #7 and #8 seed in the Championship game for the 2014 NCAA Tournament.

If anyone has ever wondered why I love this sport so much, it’s because as we have seen throughout this tournament, anything can happen. You can not rule out teams and no matter how their regular season went, upsets can happen in tournament play. More often then not, it comes down to a question of who wants it more. Who has more heart? And who is willing to play the hardest for it?

All of these questions will be answered Monday night when the whole country watches to see if UCONN or Kentucky goes home with the 2014 NCAA Tournament Championship.