March Madness is here! With star-studded teams, mouth-watering matchups, and legacies on the line, college basketball is about to crown a champion for this season. A lot of Northside students are pumped to see who will be victorious. Many of our seniors’ future schools are participating. With the men’s and women’s tournaments underway we are all excited to see who will take it all. Major upsets have already occurred and giants like North Carolina and Houston on the men’s side and Stanford on the women’s side have fallen.
Every season, tens of millions of people fill out a bracket for the entire tournament. The odds of a person picking the perfect bracket are so low that a person is more likely to become president than make a perfect bracket. Unpredictability and beating the odds is the name of the game in this high-stakes time period.
What is not as difficult as bracket perfection is picking a winner, or who the final teams will be. A person has a 1 in 64 chance of picking a winner. This means that of Northside’s students close to 16 will pick the right winner. Although there are strategies to pick the winner, there’s no real way of knowing. But, we can still try our best!
We asked two students from each grade who they thought was going to win the men’s and women’s tournament. Some results were similar but most of them had a variety. Many students picked teams that they liked the name of or the mascot, while others went with one of the favorites to win the tournament. Here are our results by grade:
Freshman Eryk Kowalik (Adv. 704) believes that Northwestern will win the men’s tournament and Rice will win the women’s tournament
Freshman Caroline Wright (Adv. 700) thinks Duke will win the men’s and UConn will win the women’s tournament.
Sophomore Cecelie Garcia (Adv. 600) said that Iowa State would win the men’s tournament and that Princeton would win the women’s.
Sophomore Willem Johnston (Adv. 607) supports Drake for the men’s tourney and Nebraska for the women’s.
Junior Safiya Baqui (Adv. 506) has faith in the men’s team of Northwestern and the women’s team at Princeton.
Junior Jackson Duong (Adv. 506) Put his support towards Nebraska for men’s and Iowa for women’s.
Senior Quinn Shanahan (Adv. 409) has got Kentucky on the men’s side and Iowa for the women’s.
Senior Mohammedhanzalah Behlim (Adv. 402) is sure that on the men’s side UConn will win and USC for women’s.
Not many commonalities were seen but some answers that did repeat were Northwestern and UConn for men’s, along with Iowa for women’s.
The tournament has just started meaning nobody will truly know what team will win until it ends. Northside students had some interesting and unpredictable guesses. Many students are excited to see who will win the tournaments and are hopeful their team will win. March is always an exciting time and best of luck to every school.