Today, Thursday March 14, puts us at exactly one week away from the First Round of the incredible March Madness tournament. Every Conference tournament is either being played out, or teams have already punched their ticket to the tournament. As of now, we have 14/32 auto-bids. An auto-bid is a guranteed spot in the tournament for all 32 conference champions.
A lot of crazy upsets happen in the conference tournaments and a team that has not won a conference game all season, can go on a run in their tournament, and punch their ticket to March Madness. That would be what is called a bid stealer. There are teams on whats called the bubble, and if they are out of the conference tournament already, their fate relies on other teams either winning or losing in their tournament.
The bubble teams break down into 3 main sections. The sections being Last Four Byes, Last Four in, First Four Out. Teams that fall in the Last Four Byes section, are teams that played well enough to avoid playing in the play in games. These teams as they stand now are, Oklahoma, Seton Hall, Mississippi State, and Michigan State. The Last Four in, are the teams that will play for 2 of the 11 seeds. These teams currently are, our very own Colorado, Virginia, St. Johns, and Indiana State. If that stands, we would have some great play in games for the 11 seeds. The First Four Out, are the teams that need to get some unexpected wins in their respective conference tournaments, because as of now, they are the first four teams that just dont make the cut. These teams are Texas A&M, Villanova, New Mexico, and Wake Forest.
Then comes Selection Sunday, which is March 17th. They decide the bracket and what 68 teams will be fighting for the trophy. There are two games and its for 2 of the 16 seeds. These are the worst teams in the tournament. But dont count these teams out as Farleigh Dickinson found themselves battling for a 16 seed, and then went on to beat the 1 seed Purdue in the first round. There is also two games to decide 2 of the 11 seeds in the bracket.
March Madness is the most electric sporting event of the year, because of the crazy upsets, games, and dark horse teams we see every year. Some of the drak horse teams that we saw last year made incredible runs. 9 seed Florida Atlantic went all the to the final four, when they were only the higher seed in 1 game. There were two 5 seeds in the final four last year being Miami, and San Deigo State. Another dark horse was the Princeton Tigers. They were a 15 seed in the tournament, and took down number 2 Arizona in the first round, and then went on to beat Missouri in the Round of 32.
Some teams I could see making a cinderella run this year is the Nevada Wolfpack. They are projected to be a 7 seed, and depending on. the teams they draw I could see them going very deep in the tournament.
