One thing I’m always reminded about in March is I know nothing, you know nothing, whoever your favorite sports commentator is knows nothing — everyone is a victim of March Madness.
I can spend hours consuming anything related to college basketball while looking at the little intricate details, but then again it would be all for not. The NCAA Tournament is the only time I believe someone with no prior sports knowledge has just as much of a chance to pick more correct games in their bracket than a college basketball junky.
That's why March is arguably one of the best times of the year — it’s so unpredictable.
I’ll admit I’m not one of those people who makes 10 different brackets across multiple websites. I usually just make one in my family bracket contest, and this year, I have Duke winning it all, which is a bit of a boring pick.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Auburn’s team and do truthfully believe it is the best team in the country. But when it comes to the tournament I have my doubts. When looking at the odds of how the tournament usually plays out, a No.1 seeded team has won six out of the last seven years — the outlier being the 2020 season where there was no tournament.
If you were to look at the odds currently; Duke and Florida are tied as the heavy favorites to come out on top with Auburn sliding in at No. 3 and the final one-seeded Houston as the fourth-best.
One of the ‘upsets’ that I hoped for desperately was my alma mater, Georgia, making it to the next round. Gonzaga made sure to take away all my hope of the Bulldogs having any success jumping out to a 27-3 lead in the first half. I still have to give credit where it's due, when Mike White took over a dysfunctional Georgia team who had just gone 6-26 the year prior the expectations for immediate success were low. However, White took the laughing stock of SEC basketball and morphed them into a tournament team.
So far, at the time I’m writing this, the only major upset we’ve seen was No. 12 seeded McNeese State over No. 5 seed Clemson, 69-67. Then followed by No. 11 seeded Drake over No. 6 seeded Missouri, 67-57. I’d imagine someone would mention No. 9 Creighton over No. 8 Louisville was another notable upset, which it was, but it's also virtually the same Creighton team who went to the Sweet 16 last year.
The main thing I’m looking for in the tournament, now that Georgia is out, is what team is going to make a Cinderella run. After just one day I got my eyes on McNeese State, but they don’t fit the prototypical build of what I’d imagine to be a Cinderella team. I don’t have faith in these teams but what I’d envision to be candidates would be No. 15 seeded Bryant and No. 13 seeded Grand Canyon — no reasoning behind it, just vibes.
The second thing I’ll be monitoring is what characters are going to come out of the tournament. Last year, it was N.C. State’s D.J. Burns Jr and the team’s Final Four run paired alongside Oakland's sharpshooter Jack Gohlke. In 2022, it was St. Peters’ mustached bandit Doug Edert and his team’s run to the Elite 8. This year though, I think we are going to have a 2018 Loyola-Chicago Sister Jean level character who doesn’t play basketball that’ll be a notable figure. That’s right, I think it’s going to be McNeese State’s manager Amir “Aura” Khan, the manager who’s gained notable traction on social media.
"If they kept manager stats for rebounding and wiping up wet spots on the court, I'd put up Wilt Chamberlain numbers," Khan’s bio reads on the McNeese State basketball website.
It’s only the beginning of the NCAA Tournament, with much heartbreak left on the table. There will be upsets, there will be buzzer-beaters and there will eventually be a champion. Although it is just the beginning, I’m excited to see what is to come out of this year’s March Madness.
Samuel Higgs is the sports editor of The Outlook.