College Basketball’s most prized tournament is back. March Madness is here and for the next three weeks 64 Division One schools small and large will look to create history and have their names enshrined in glory.
The four first seeds on the men’s side are Purdue, the University of Connecticut (UCONN), Houston, and the University of North Carolina (UNC). On the women’s side, their tournament first seeds are headlined by Iowa, South Carolina, the University of Southern California, and Texas.
Starting with the men, UCONN is the reigning champion and has proved itself to be one of the best basketball programmes ever. Purdue is led by 7 ‘4 centre Zach Edey, the reigning college National Player of the Year, and he is in the running to win it again. However, Purdue is known to choke in these tournaments, becoming only the second No. 1 seed ever to lose to a No. 16 seed when it was upset by Fairleigh Dickinson last year. UNC is led by another All-American this year in guard RJ Davis, who is on the verge of breaking the Tar Heel record for most three-pointers made in a season. The Houston Cougars are not lightweights either. They have the tenth most final-four appearances at six led by guard Jamal Shead who also received All-American honours.
Now introducing the women’s top 4 four teams, headlined by Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, the undisputed best player in women’s basketball. This season Clark has broken the all-time point record for men’s and women’s, passing Pete Maravich, who had held that record for over 40 years. After winning with a buzzer-beater last week to keep their undefeated streak alive, South Carolina, who are led by legendary coach Dawn Staley, are looking to win their second title in three years. For USC it has been a different story. From countless lacklustre seasons to landing the best high school player in the country in freshman Juju Watkins, and now winning their first Pac-12 title since 2014, USC has finally arrived. Watkins has elevated USC’s talents to a whole new level, as the freshman has become the first USC player to secure All-American honours since the 1990s. Finally, for Texas, they sit in the first seed for the first time since 2004. After losing their star player Rori Harmon to injury right before conference play, Texas looked to be done. However, freshman Madison Booker has come in and replaced Harmon at the point and is now the Big 12 player of the year.
What makes March Madness so great is the upsets that happen along the way, the Cinderella stories of schools you have never heard of making legendary runs that etch their name in history. So for this year, for both the men’s and women’s tournaments, here are some of those schools that can go deep.
BYU and Nevada are my picks to make a run in the men’s tournament. BYU has one of the most balanced offences in the league, and they have made the third most threes in basketball this season. They also beat Kansas two weeks ago, the fourth seed heading into the tournament. As for Nevada, they have experience which is much needed to make a run. Team leaders Jarod Lucas and Kenan Blackshear have led the way to Nevada winning 10 out of their last 11 games.
On the women’s side, the Missouri Tigers have been able to give top teams a run for their money. They handed South Carolina their first and only loss of the season in an overtime game, while also having two other overtime games that ultimately did not fall in their favour. However, having this overtime and late-game experience is crucial for teams hoping to make a run in March. My other dark horse would be the University of Central Florida. UCF has had great looking wins over Arkansas and rival South Florida recently and, more importantly, their only two losses have been to the ranked teams, Iowa and Tennessee. They also only lost by single digits in both games. The reason for this is their stellar defence, which is ranked third in the nation. Maybe the saying ‘defence wins championships’ is no longer true in the modern game, but it can absolutely take you deep into a tournament.
For these next three weeks, we will see countless classic games going down to the wire, we will see Cinderella stories of minnow teams no one has heard of take down tournament favourites, and we will see tough and competitive basketball. March Madness is not for the faint-hearted; it is a great sports tournament where anything can happen.
“Caitlin Clark Big Ten tournament (cropped)” by John Mac is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0