Yesterday, March 31st, concluded the Elite 8 of the March Madness tournament, and as per usual, everyones bracket is cooked. The tournament overall has had its great games and good upsets, but has been pretty chalk, with two 1 seeds in the final 4.
Starting in the first round, many brackets were already busted with some key loses such as, 6 seed BYU going down to 11 seed Dusquene, 4 seed Auburn losing to 13 seeded Yale, 5 seed Saint Marys losing to 12 seed GCU, and the biggest upset of the first round being 14 seed Oakland upsetting 3 seed Kentucky.
Me personally, saw 2 of my final 4 teams losing in the first round being Kentucky and Auburn. This was heartbreaking. Jack Gohlke was something special in this game for the Oakland Golden Grizzlies. He came off the bench and did what he is best at, and that is shooting 3 pointers. Thats all he did. Gohlke had 20 field goal attempts, all 20 of which, were 3 pointers. He went 50% which is extremely good, and also shot 2 free throws ending the game with 32 points. The craziest part of this whole game is that Jack Gohlke would cath the ball and shoot, no matter where he was on the court, Gohlke dribbled the ball 4 times the entire game which is absolutley mind boggling.
Another team that deserves all of the attention, is the NC State Wolfpack. The Pack had what seemed little to no hope to even make the NCAA Tournament. They were losing to 8-24 Lousville at half-time. In the semi-finals, UVA was up by 3 points with 5 minutes left in the game, Virginia had a chance to make it a 4 point game, but missed the free throw leading to an NC State buzzer beater 3. They have won 9 straight win or go home games in the span of 25 days which is incredibly inprobable.
One of my favorite games of the tournament so far was 3 seed Illinois vs. 1 seed UConn. The final score was 77-52, which does not seem like a close game or a fun game to watch, but what UConn did in this game was something that rarely ever happens. Basketball is known as “a game of runs”, and UConn did indeed have a run in this game. The score was 23-23, with about a minute to go until halftime, and this is what looked like the first team that was going to maybe have a chance at giving the reigning national champions a run for their money. Uconn went a 30-0 run. They scored 30 consecutive points to make the score 53-23, and from this point on it was all Huskies.
With the Final Four being set, 4 seed Alabama taking on the overall 1 seed UConn Huskies, and cinderella herself, 11 seed NC State, mathcing up against 1 seed Purdue Boilermakers. I hate to be chalky, but I do think that UConn beats Alabama in a close game, and Purdue has no problem with NC State. This would set us up for a great championship game, in which I would take the Purdue Boilermakers.
