A Very Wild March Madness

You may have heard the news of Kansas beating UNC in a buzzer-beating final game of the NCAA Division I Basketball League. But that wasn’t the only exciting moment in the 2022 edition of March Madness. All throughout last month, the league kept fans on the edge of their seats as several key matchups became tossups in its last seconds.

One of the best parts of this year’s March Madness was how it was absolutely unpredictable. So many top ranked teams like Seed 3 Wisconsin and Seed 2 Auburn lost in upset games against lower ranked teams like Seed 11 Iowa and Seed 10 Miami. In a league that is almost exclusively dominated by the top 4 seeds, it was exhilarating to watch them get knocked out and watching some of the lower teams get a chance to show what they have.

But even though it was exhilarating for the casual fan, it was anxiety-inducing and soul-crushing for all the people who made March Madness brackets. In these brackets, participants start with the matchups decided by the NCAA and need to decide who will win each game all the way to the final. If someone miraculously manages to get every single game correct, they can win $100,000,000. But if they get one game wrong, it can mess up their entire bracket and leave them with barely anything. Because of all the upsets this season, so many brackets failed, leaving so many bracket-makers in anguish after losing their shot at 100 million.

And that brings us back to the final game. Seed 1 Kansas managed to survive all of the upsets and made it to the finals. Meanwhile, Seed 8 UNC won in 3 huge upsets against Seed 1 Baylor, Seed 4 UCLA, and Seed 2 Duke, clawing their way up to the finals. Half-way through this intense contest, UNC was leading and it looked like it was going to be another upset. But the UNC players were running out of steam and Kansas took the opportunity to stage a 16-point comeback, the biggest in March Madness history, and won it all 72-69, concluding the most-watched final game and one of the most thrilling seasons in March Madness history.