By Matt Allen, news correspondent
With the the Sweet Sixteen starting this Thursday, Wisconsin, Carolina and UCLA will be the teams to watch. On Northeastern’s campus, students expressed excitement over watching modern-day gladiators duke it out on live television for a few weeks.
Beyond the thrill of the National College Athletic Association’s (NCAA) March Madness, many fans are simply excited by the prospect of having a distraction from everyday life. Daniel Doherty, a 29-year-old graduate student at Northeastern’s School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, watches the tournament for a break from his day-to-day routine.
“As someone who is currently in the working world, the best thing about the tournament is that it is a fantastic distraction from work,” Doherty said. “For weeks, everyone is so excited about basketball that no one wants to work, and I don’t even care if I lose money because of it.”
The Sweet Sixteen will continue through Friday, and will be followed by the regional finals this upcoming weekend. The Final Four takes place in Phoenix, Arizona, on Saturday, April 1 and leads into the National Championship the following Monday.
The first two rounds have already played host to a number of surprising upsets like No. 7 University of Michigan’s 73-69 second round victory over No. 2 Louisville, and of course the No. 8 University of Wisconsin-Madison’s 65-62 second round victory over the top seeded Villanova Wildcats.
With so many major upsets taking place left and right, many Northeastern NCAA basketball fans are left wondering who will bring home the gold.
“I still have Kentucky winning it all, but I’m starting to doubt my picks,” said Jamie Martin, a freshman journalism major. “It’s pretty much anyone’s tournament at this point, but I wouldn’t be surprised if UNC still came out on top.”
UCLA was a commonly predicted team to win the tournament by many sports analysts, but I was hesitant about how good they would be, especially since UCLA seems like the Lonzo Ball show.
He defers on the highlight reel plays and uses his excellent court vision to find the open man. He has shown that he can make extraordinarily difficult offensive plays in tough moments, but often chooses to pass the opportunities to his teammates, reminiscent of Chris Paul—a staple of one of the best NBA point guards of all time.
Ball is accompanied by draft prospects that look to fly off the shelf in the first round of the 2017 NBA Draft. The NCAA basketball superstars include stellar guards like point guard De’Aaron Fox of the University of Kentucky and point guard Lonzo Ball of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Bruins.
College basketball star big men and forwards like center Justin Patton of Creighton University, guard/small forward Josh Jackson of Kansas State and small forward Jayson Tatum of Duke University will also be on display. All of these elite college talents will be fiercely competing to win it all and raise their NBA draft stock.
Many basketball fans, including third-year political science major Jackson Ibelle, will be watching this tournament to get an early glimpse at the NBA All-Stars of tomorrow.
“I am a much bigger fan of the NBA then the NCAA, so I usually use this tournament as a way to see who the future Celtic draft picks will be,” Ibelle said. “This year, I’ll be focusing on small forward Jayson Tatum from the Duke Blue Devils, and shooting guard Josh Jackson from the Kansas Jayhawks in particular.”
With the Celtics in possession of a top five 2017 draft pick, team owners will be paying close attention to this year’s March Madness. It is very possible that one of the extraordinary talents on display during this tournament will be wearing green in the not too distant future.
Some of what makes March Madness thrilling to watch is its underdog stories. Valiant underdog NCAA sagas like the last seeded 1996 Princeton Tigers beating the No. 1 seeded UCLA Bruins in the first round, or North Carolina State’s 1983 buzzer-beating shot in the National Championship have shown that there is always a chance.
Just like the Boston Red Sox’s 2004 four game comeback in the ALCS, which all started with David Ortiz’s Game 4 walk-off homerun, momentum is what has driven so many of the best sports epics.
The momentum gained by Wisconsin’s three point victory over the reigning champion Villanova squad will push them to at least the final four, in my opinion.
If I had to predict the championship right now, I would say it’s going to be Wisconsin against UCLA, with the Bruins hoisting the trophy in the end.
