Mouth of the River

As the perfect brackets of March Madness are slowly whittled down, millions of people are lamenting bad bracket choices and unpredicted upsets. Who would have guessed that the Texas Longhorns would win five straight games to get to the Sweet 16?  Not me, that’s for sure.

I pride myself in my sports knowledge, especially on basketball. My ‘for you’ pages are flooded with sports information and news 24/7. I care more about a team’s chemistry than balancing chemical equations—sorry Wainwright.

At this point in the tournament, it’s the Final Four. I’m going to share my Final Four as a self-described spreadsheet maniac, but first I’ll share my insights on the hits and misses of picks from the games so far.

So, when I checked my family’s bracket competition and saw that I had only a 34% correct pick rate, I was upset. I had worked scrupulously to make the perfect bracket, to no avail. It certainly didn’t help that my 8-year-old brother, who has not watched a single minute of college basketball, was sitting calmly at 96%. Little Adler was in the top 500K of all bracket makers.

The most notorious moments of March Madness are the historic upsets. Take Fairleigh Dickinson: In 2023 as a 16-seed, they overcame a powerhouse 1-seed Purdue team led by future NBA player Zach Edey. This was only the second time since the creation of the 64-team playoff that a 16-seed had upset a 1.

It wasn’t unprecedented, but it was unexpected to say the least. Modern bracket predictions always have upsets, and it’s important to account for them when attempting to design the perfect bracket.

For this year’s tournament, my personal picks as sneaky upset candidates were 12-seed McNeese, 12-seed Akron and 11-seed VCU. Terrible.  

McNeese got their butts handed to them by Vanderbilt, definitely a bad pick. Crass, I know.

This next one stung a little bit. After coming across a YouTube video on Akron star Tavari Johnson, I became obsessed with the senior guard. His speed and capability to cut and make tough shots compelled me to root for the Underdog mid-major in their bout against Texas Tech. On top of that, Texas Tech All-American JT Toppin was out for the season with an injury, so I felt safe making this pick. As it turns out, Tavari Johnson is fraudulent and could only muster up a measly 4 points and 3 turnovers against a still excellent Texas Tech team.

I was tired of seeing my picks miss, so when I saw that VCU had upset a blue-blood team in North Carolina, I was psyched! Maybe my bracket luck was finally turning around.

Some of the upsets that I should have picked looked so obvious in hindsight. I was kicking myself—High Point over Wisconsin? Analysts had been calling it an upset since Selection Sunday.

One of the hardest things to do in bracket prediction is deciding the 8-9 games. These two teams are basically deemed equal by NCAA bracket builders, and it’s usually a 50-50 call, so it’s definitely a tough choice.

I knew that 9-seed Saint Louis would beat 8-seed Georgia, and they did resoundingly, putting up 101 points on the Bulldogs. And I picked Iowa, led by superstar point guard, Bennett Sturtz to beat Clemson. They then went all the way to the Elite Eight, even beating 1 seeded Florida.

But the Buckeyes broke my heart. Over the course of the NCAA basketball season, I fell in love with the slow and steady guard play of Ohio State’s Bruce Thornton. The 4x team captain, and program’s leading scorer had never made the tournament. I was sure that the Buckeyes could beat the scrappy and chaotic TCU team. It was close, but TCU came away with the win. That scrappy defensive energy was the Buckeyes’ kryptonite. Truly, I almost shed a tear

Honestly, the most important thing about your NCAA bracket is who is in your Final Four. Mine was St. Johns, Houston, Arizona and Michigan. Arizona and Michigan made it. Houston fell early to Illinois in the Sweet 16, and St. Johns to Duke. In retrospect, that St. Johns pick was one of my worst yet.

 The current Final 4 is 1-seed Michigan against 1-seed Arizona, and on the other side, 2-seed UConn against 3-seed Illinois.

Illinois will make it into the National Championship simply because they are the hottest team in college basketball. Led by underrated freshman star Keaton Wagler and Andrej Stojakovic, son of former NBA 3-point sniper, Peja Stojakovic. Statistically, they have the best offense in college basketball this season. Wagler leads the team averaging around 18 points per game, while Stojakovic averages around 13.

As a final prediction, knowing what I know now, it’s going to be an Arizona v. Illinois final, with Arizona coming out on top. This is because Arizona has been a consistent force all season. They have wins over numerous ranked teams like Houston, UConn, Florida and Iowa State. In three of these games Arizona had a different leading scorer, showing that any of the players on the roster can go off on a high scoring night. Their only obstacle is a lack of experience. The only senior in the starting unit, Jaden Bradley has played the last three years with Arizona. This could bode poorly against Michigan, as they carry a ton of veteran talent including all-American Yaxel Lendeborg. They don’t have a single freshman in their starting lineup.

While I can give these facts, and make my best guess based off of them, they don’t do the prediction process justice. It’s been proven, time and time again, that anything can happen in March. A 64-team tournament makes for a 1 in 9.2 quintillion chance for a perfect bracket. No joke.

Most people think March Madness is all about odds. How likely is it that this team beats this one. But really, it’s about luck. There’s a reason that at the time that I’m writing this, Joey Chestnut, the notorious hot dog eating competition legend, has an almost perfect bracket. Or why my second-grade brother is beating me. You don’t need to know about college basketball, or even, dare I say, to know what basketball is. You just need to pick a team, press submit, and let luck take you through the madness.

-Levi Clapp

visuals from Geoff Burke at ESPN