Once again the NCAA Final Four tournament aka March Madness is upon us. Everyone is talking brackets. “Bracketology” is now a science and even our President, Barack Obama gets involved in the non-political atmosphere of the college basketball championship tournament with his own Final Four bracket named “Barack-etology.” This year the President picked the Michigan State Spartans to win it all. Joining in on the trend, Warren Buffet and Quicken Loans this year came up with a Billion Dollar Bracket Challenge with the prize being one billion dollars to the person who can fill out the perfect NCAA tournament bracket. Brackets are everywhere so no matter what you do, and where you are in America you probably either filled out a Final Four bracket and maybe even ten of them. Or are on the complete opposite end where you don’t want to hear the word bracket ever again. This is considered by many the greatest day in sports in the U.S. and is debated plentiful.
There are sixty four teams seeded within four sections and each section has seeds one through sixteen. Now history tells us that there will usually be at least one number twelve seeded team that defeats the number five seeded team in the first round. This year was no different, the number twelve seeded Harvard University went on to upset the number five seed Cincinnati by a score of sixty-one to fifty-seven. Another more closely battled upset came to Ohio State at the hands of Dayton by only one point in a sixty to fifty-nine battle that came down to the final seconds. However this was not the upset of the tournament so far. The biggest upset came when the number three seeded Duke University lost to a number fourteen seeded Mercer. Duke usually one of the perennial favorites every year for the fact that they have one of the best coaches in history to ever coach college basketball in Mike Krzyzewski, who also happened to coach the Men’s US Olympic basketball team most recently. They are also a very talented and reliable team with one of the top college players in Jabari Parker, a lock for the NBA whenever he decides to become a professional basketball player and enter the NBA Draft. Duke lost by the score of seventy-eight to seventy-one in what is considered the upset of the tournament thus far. Duke’s coach, Mike Krzyzewski went into the Mercer locker room after the game to congratulate the team and said “If we got beaten, at least we got beaten by a hell of a basketball team.” In life it’s important to always be a class act no matter the outcome of the situation, and this is why no matter what, every year Duke is always a favorite.
