It's Madness: March Madness

By Jacob Klein and Spencer Serling

The Magnitude

Who would make a bet knowing that their chance of winning was 1 in 18.4 quintillion? Come March, millions of Americans begin filling out their team brackets for the long-awaited March Madness college basketball tournament. Every year, 65 schools compete in one of the most-awaited events of the year. Ever since its creation in 1939, the tournament has drawn eager fans from all over the world who try to guess which team will win.

How big is March Madness? In last year’s tournament, almost one millionpeople traveled out of their way to attend one of the 64 games. On one day of the tournament last year, 35 million people watched college basketball on TV. The tournament captures, and then crushes, the hearts of people around the globe. SHS can’t escape the excitement these games evoke. Both students and faculty avidly follow the month-long tournament.

It’s All About Luck

Whether attending games or watching on TV, March Madness provides a thrill because of its inherent unpredictability. “I remember last year there were a few upsets such as Michigan State beating Louisville and Cleveland State beating Wake Forest,” recalled senior Neal Yousefian. Even when the powerhouses of the sport, such as Duke or Kentucky, play against a largely unknown college, the outcome of the game is unpredictable.

Many SHS students participate in these betting pools. Sophomore Jordan Elkins expects to have at least 30 kids submit a bracket in a pool he is running this year. “I’ve been keeping track of the brackets since sixth grade every year,” said Elkins.

“I really enjoy participating because I know a lot about college basketball and I research it… and I usually have a good chance at winning,” he added. Elkins credits the success of his pools to the fact that “a lot of kids who don’t know much about sports will enter and see if they get lucky.”

Guesstimations

While some students admit to random guessing, Yousefian makes sure he does all of his research before predicting the winners. “Of course, it’s important to research if you want your bracket to be as perfect as possible,” said Yousefian. People on different sports websites such as sportsillustrated.com, ESPN.com, sportsline.com, and yahoo.com make predictions and mock brackets as soon as the actual bracket for the year comes out.

Sophomore Andrew Crean, a varsity basketball player at SHS, attributes his interest in the tournament to his experience playing basketball.“As you start playing in more competitive leagues, the level of play gets higher and higher but the gap between the skill level of varsity games and Division I NCAA tournament games is pretty large,” said Crean. “Everything is faster and all of the players are more athletic.”

The Favorites

Even though a lot of people make brackets just to follow the tournament, some people, like science teacher Nelson DaSilva, follow the tournament because they love a certain team. As an alumnus of the University of North Carolina, DaSilva has been a UNC fan since the days of Michael Jordan.
Although UNC is usually a winning team, the unavoidable inconsistency of the tournament is shown by their more recent losses. “When an opposing team starts scoring basket after basket, Carolina cannot find a way to stop them,” lamented DaSilva.

Nevertheless, he still plans on “following them the whole tournament. I remain positive, but very skeptical. I don’t think this is going to be a Carolina year.” In line with DaSilva’s guesses, the predicted favorites this year do not include UNC.

While many argue that the regular season matters very little, the season before March Madness plays an integral role in determining the bracket. For example, take into consideration a team that finishes fourth in the nation and a team that finishes ninth. Although the difference in records for the two teams might only be one win, it has a dramatic effect on their schedule.

The fourth best team gets to play the 61st best team in the first round. Assuming they win, which has happened with every number one seed in the past, they move on to play a team ranked somewhere in the 30s, another presumably easy win. However, fthe team in ninth place, they first faces off against a team in the high 40s, followed immediately by a team in the top 25. If they win, they have to play the number one team in the nation. In this way, the design of the March Madness bracket is meant to give the best teams an easier path to the final rounds.

The Selection

How are the 65 teams chosen? Thirty-one teams earn their spots in the tournament by winning their respective conference tournament during the preceding weeks. To determine the remaining 34 teams, a selection committee comprised of athletic directors and conference commissioners from around the country meets on March 14, otherwise known as “Selection Sunday,” to determine which teams receive “at large” bids. The selection committee uses numerous factors to award bids, such as strength of schedule and RPI. The RPI, or Ratings Percentage Index, consists of a team’s winning percentage, opponent’s winning percentage, and lastly their opponent’s opponents’ winning percentages. For example, if a team goes undefeated throughout a year, but plays teams lowly ranked in RPI, they will not receive a good RPI and therefore will not receive a good seeding in the bracket.

There is much speculation about the final few at-large bids given. Some people feel that the selection committee can be biased; in years past, the committee has given bids to teams from the power conferences over teams from smaller conferences.

Numbers Don’t Matter

However, the traditional 65-team tournament may soon be changing; Sports Ilustrated recently wrote that many of the executives who make the tournament have been considering expanding the number of teams from 65 to 96.

“I think making a bracket for the tournament would be a lot more difficult if there were 96 teams playing in it because more games would be played, meaning a greater chance for upsets,” said sophomore Graham Winston. “It would be bad because it ruins tradition and puts undeserving teams into the field of play,” agreed Elkins.

In the end, the number of teams in the tournament won’t matter. And it won’t matter how many wins a team has, or how many points their best player averages. Because in the tournament, anyone can score, any team can win, and anything can happen.