March Madness As Usual
The highly anticipated annual College basketball Tournament where the players in the nation compete for bragging rights. This tournament returned this year after last year’s tournament was canceled due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
This tournament was very different from previous years. For the first time, all the games were played in Indiana to limit the number of COVID causes. All NCAA players were required to wear a tile-like device to monitor contact tracing. The device can identify who was within six feet of someone infected with COVID-19 and for how long.
The big Tournament kicked off with the First Four games being played on March 18th. The first round began on March 19th and ended on March 20th. The second round started the next day and had many upsets that no one saw coming. The first of upsets came from Number 8 ranked Loyola Chicago defeating number 1 ranked Illinois 71-58. The next big upset of the second round came from number 15 ranked Oral Roberts beating number 7 ranked Florida 81-78. The projected number one pick of the 2021 NBA draft, Cade Cunningham team was upset by number 12 ranked Oregon State.
In the Sweet 16, Oral Roberts and Loyola Chicago’s luck ran out when they lost respectfully to Arkansas and Oregon State. The undefeated Gonzaga Bulldogs continued to campaign for their historically undefeated season when they defeated Creighton 83-65. Michigan, UCLA, USC, Baylor, and Houston also won their games to advance to the Elite 8.
In the Elite 8, Houston and Oregon State faced off against each other, and Houston ended up walking away with the W. Baylor defeated Arkansas 81-72 and Gonzaga beat USC by 19 points. UCLA advanced to the Final Four when they upset number 1 ranked Michigan 51-49.
On April 3, the final four teams played to secure a spot in the National Championship. Number 1 ranked Baylor easily secured their spot in the championship when they rallied to beat number 2 Houston 78-59. Gonzaga and UCLA battled out for one of the greatest March Madness games ever. The game went into OT and with 9.4 seconds left it looked like the game was going to be sent into another overtime period. Freshman Gonzaga star, Jalen Suggs thought otherwise. With 3.3 seconds left in the game, he pulled up from the logo and banked in the shot that ended up sending them to the National Championship to have a chance to go undefeated on the whole season.
The National Championship was on April 4th and it included Baylor for the first time and Gonzaga who was previously in the championship game in 2017. The Baylor Bears were led by NBA Draft lottery prospect Davion Mitchell and Jared Butler. The undefeated Gonzaga Bulldogs were led by NBA Draft lottery prospect Jalen Suggs and bigman Drew Timme. Right off the bat, the Baylor Bears looked dominant on both offense and defense and it was the first time Gonzaga looked like they weren’t going to win all season.
At halftime, the Gonzaga bulldogs cut the deficit down to 47-37. The first part of the second half looked promising for the Bulldogs as they kept cutting the led down little by little. Baylor stuck to their game plan and eventually started to pull away with the game. Baylor’s Jared Butler finished with 19 points and Davion Mitchell finished with 15 points to give their team the victory and became the National Champions for the first time in history.