It’s March! We all know what that means: it’s time for what all college basketball fans have been patiently waiting for, the 2023 NCAA Tournament, also known as March Madness. 

The NCAA is the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The Division I March Madness is an elimination tournament in which 68 teams compete. The CBS broadcaster Brent Musburger popularized the term ‘Final Four’ when covering the 1982 tournament. However, it was first coined in 1939 by Henry Porter, a high school basketball coach in Illinois. Millions of basketball fans across the country are excited to see which college team will win. 

Our next-door neighbor, the Villanova Wildcats basketball team, didn’t perform well enough to make it into the tournament this year. The Wildcats recently lost their former coach Jay Wright. He was the head coach for Villanova University from 2001 to 2022. He won two national championships with them in 2016 and 2018.    

One fun way to enjoy March Madness is to fill out a bracket. Grab a group and friends and predict the winner of each game, and whoever gets the most games right wins. Can you pick a perfect bracket where you guess every game correctly? Maybe you can, but it’s not likely, since the odds are 1 in 9,233,372,036,854,775,808 or 1 in 9.2 quintillions! Good luck! 

The tournament has begun, and it’s definitely madness. We’ve already seen a few upsets. What that means is what was supposed to happen based on past performance and seeding did not ultimately occur. The first upset was that No. 15 seed Princeton, who entered the tournament because it is the Ivy League Champion, unexpectedly won its game against Arizona, a No. 2 seed! Meanwhile, No. 13 seed Furman won against Virginia No. 4. Purdue, No. 1 seed in the East, lost to No. 16 seed Fairleigh Dickinson University in one of the biggest losses yet. This has only happened one other time. What a way to begin the madness!!! We call these kinds of plays ‘Cinderella stories,’ and I’m sure there will be more to come. See you on the courts!