March Madness Round 3: A Likely Turnout

Monday, March 23, 2015

J.R. Taylor, GoLocalPDX Contributor

As the third round comes to an end, no perfect brackets remain. Our lone survivor fell after predicting an Ohio State upset, and to think this guy had a perfect bracket up until this point. Time to rewrite the definition of madness I suppose.

The round of 32 played out the way it does most years. The teams who are truly better prove it by blowing the hopeful's out of the water. All the small mid-western schools who had dreams of dancing their way to the final's get a long-awaited wake up call from the far superior D1 giants. Similar to the little brother challenging the big brother in a wrestling face-off, you know how it goes.

Kentucky and Gonzaga were the big brother's in this tournament. The two teams had a field day with Iowa and Cincinnati. No surprise here.

UCLA has surprised the country with it's tournament run thus far. The bruins hopped on easy street after their first round upset against SMU. They have been playing like this is their tournament ever since. The same could be said for the unsuspected team of underdogs from Utah. The Utes caught Georgetown on their heels, and was sure to make them play for sleeping on this Salt Lake squadron. 8th seed NC St. had a big upset over the 1st seed Villanova.

The third round really belonged to the 7th seed teams. 7th seed Wichita State surpassed number 2 seed Kansas to earn their seat in the sweet sixteen, as well as Michigan State sneaking past Virginia. Both games were battled to the buzzer, but the underdogs walked away from the explosion with no signs of looking back, how suave?

Duke shocked the country by not choking this year, and by actually reaching the sweet sixteen. Some may call this harsh, but if this is not your first year following March Madness you have the same villainous grin as I do.

As we head into the sweet sixteen, all things thus far seem to fold as I had predicted. Some may refer to it as witchery, other's sorcery. I can neither confirm or deny these theories, but what I can say is that if you picked based on numbers and not on luck, you are doing quite well. Enjoy the sweet sixteen, and feel free to print out a fresh new bracket and fill it out to show off to your friend. Everyone's doing it. I won't tell.