By: Sean Muth

Sentry Staff Reporter

With the arrival of March, spring returns and so does the time to fill out brackets. College basketball season is almost at a close, but it will go out with a bang. The National Collegiate Athletic Association Men’s Basketball tournament is approaching, bringing along a season of its own, March Madness. As basketball fans everywhere prepare themselves to write down the names of different colleges on a sheet of paper, they use these first weeks of the month to review records and past games to help them decide which teams they will select to advance in their brackets. However, there is always a group of people who do not understand the appeal of brackets, but they are in the minority. Many people, whether avid analysts or casual fans, will fill out brackets every year.

“It gives you a reason to watch the games,” said sophomore Alec Glasser. “It gives you a chance to make a bold prediction, and if it comes true, it is great.”

While the most stress often comes from trying to pick lower ranked teams that could make a run, the most heartbreaking moments come when the seemingly obvious team to choose suffers a terrible loss. In the 2013 tournament, the Georgetown University Hoyas were ranked as a second seeded team and fell in the first round to the fifteenth ranked Florida Gulf Coast University. With Georgetown being ranked much higher than Florida Gulf Coast, almost everyone who filled out a bracket selected the Hoyas to win. This defeat at the hands of an unknown school shocked the millions of people who had filled out brackets saying the higher ranked team would win in the first round. The loss was even worse for some, if they had selected Georgetown to go all the way to the finals, which many people sadly did.

Picking teams to advance in a bracket is always a challenge. While analyzing the entire college basketball season seems like the only good way to prepare, it can be considered overdoing it. Junior Aaron Lee sheds some light on the subject on what factors to weigh when selecting teams to advance.

“I look closely at the match ups in the front and back court,” said Lee. “You can’t get caught up in the past results earlier in the season. You have to look at how each team compares to one another from game to game.”

Each year 68 teams enter the tournament, and there is always a team that is ranked high in the tournament, and ends up disappointing like Georgetown did last year. It will most likely happen again this year, but the team it will happen to can only be guessed.

“The biggest disappointment I think will be Kansas,” said Glasser. “Their expectations are way too high and they are highly overrated, because they have too many freshman.”

While the tournament only lasts three weeks, some fans complain about the number of teams in the tournament. They believe that 68 teams is too many, and that it allows very weak teams to make the bracket. If these teams were not let in by lowering the number of teams in the tournament, it would make all of the games matter more to the competing schools.

“I think the number of teams in the tournament is just right for the time being,” said Lee. “68 teams gives the smaller schools a chance to get into the tournament, but doesn’t let so many in that the games become uncompetitive.”

Another problem that the tournament has is the date of the championship game. This year it is schedule to be on a Monday night, and sadly there is school the following day. Fans everywhere either do not stay up the whole night to watch the game, or they have to hurry and finish their homework before the game starts. However, the semifinal games take place on a Saturday giving fans the option to stay up late and not worry about work or school the next day.

“Most people agree that the final four is better than the championship because of that,” said Glasser. “Not only do people not stay up, but the intensity is higher on a Saturday.”

With the time for madness quickly approaching, fans are anxious to see the rankings in the tournament, and to print out their brackets. This is the season where anything can happen and nothing is sure, this is March Madness.

Featured image courtesy of http://www.sotounit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/final-4.jpg