With the start of March comes the NCAA’s most widespread competitive tournament: March Madness. March Madness consists of men’s and women’s basketball elimination brackets with teams being placed against each other based on ranking.

The March Madness basketball tournaments have 64 teams entered for the tournament with four different divisions including South, Midwest, West, and East. The tournament narrows down to 16 teams called the Sweet 16, the top 8 teams being called the Elite 8, the top four teams being the Final Four, and the top two teams earning a spot into the NCAA championship.

“Most of the matchups were fair during March Madness this year, since not even a 1st seed had a spot in the final four,” freshman Izaac Abdul-Zahir said.

Both the NCAA men and women’s tournaments go throughout March with the final games being held during the first weekends of April. The 2023 Men’s Final Four was #5 Miami, #4 UConn, #9 FL Atlantic, and #5 San Diego State. UConn beat Miami with a pretty simple win, while San Diego had an impressive buzzer-beater dub over FL Atlantic to go to the championship.

“I think UConn is untouchable, every game they’ve played in the tournament this year hasn’t been close,” senior Alex Davis stated.

The men’s basketball tournament concluded with the Connecticut Huskies beating San Diego State Aztecs 76-56 on April 3. UConn won the national championship by a landslide throughout the whole tournament.
The women’s basketball section of the tournament finalized its Final Four spots including #1 South Carolina, #1 Virginia Tech, #2 Iowa, and #3 LSU. South Carolina defended the NCAA championship, but they lost against Iowa on March 31. LSU stood victorious over Virginia Tech as well, knocking out both one seeds.

On April 2, LSU pulled off a 102-85 win over Iowa to win the ring. The LSU Tigers managed to take down the fan-favorite Hawkeyes team, who had Caitlin Clark. Clark had a legendary run throughout March, averaging 31.8 points per game and scoring a record high 191 points in the tournament. No men or women’s player has ever scored more than that in March Madness.

With the NCAA tournaments getting a large amount of attention during the month of March, local businesses and large businesses collect a large amount of revenue as the tournament brings in around $1.14 billion each year.

“This year has been crazy, possibly one of the best of all time,” junior Caden Brownwell stated.

The tournament wouldn’t have made this large of an amount of money without the unpredictable results of this year’s tournaments as the games were broadcasted on ESPN, TBS, TNT, and truTV.