Oh my, who out there has a perfect bracket at this point in the NCAA Tournament? I know I don't. I at least expected the No. 1 overall ranked Virginia to make it out of the first time. They were in my final four, but at least Duke, my pick to win it all, is riding high heading into a match-up with Rhode Island.
Lets break down what happened. We had two major upsets on No. 4 seeded teams with Marshall Herd shocking the Wichita State Shockers and Buffalo taking down Arizona. No. 6 Miami was also upset along with some other small upsets, like Butler beating Arkansas, throughout the day but I don't think anything will top UMBC absolutely destroying Virginia.
For those of you who fill out brackets this was an easy decision to make, or so we thought. Turns out we were in for one of the biggest upsets in the entirety of the NCAA's history. No No.16 seed has every beaten a No.1 seed. I had marked it off as the easiest pick to make. Over the first round there's bound to be upsets with No. 12 and No. 5 seed match-ups but I don't think even UMBC thought they'd come out with a win.
The Retrievers trounced the Cavaliers at a whopping score of 74-54 behind what was a shower of three-pointers coming out of a tied first half where the teams were at 21. Scoring 53 points in the second half, it looked as if Virginia and UMBC had just swapped jerseys but alas, it seemed that our brackets were doomed from the start.
Lesson learned, expect anything and everything to happen in march madness. What was once impossible has now been framed in the NCAA's history for all time. The real question is what comes next? With a big win like this, UMBC will have a lot of momentum going into the second round of the tournament against Kansas State.
With how crazy it's been, I wouldn't be surprised about anything. Alabama may beat Villanova by 50, and Duke may fall to Rhode Island sending Grayson Allen off with a broken heart. If I had the opportunity to change my bracket you better believe I would.
Welcome to the craziest tournament in sports. This is march madness, and you better believe that with what has happened in the past two days it's more than possible for a team like UMBC, with barely over 5K followers on Twitter, to come out and shock the entire world. I still firmly think that Duke will come out with another championship win, but they could lose today, busting my bracket in the process.
Good luck my fellow bracket makers, because the madness has only just begun. If this continues, we'll be feeling like we took a trip to Alice's Wonderland.
