Bracket Madness In March
March Madness (Francisco Linares/The Puma Prensa)
By: Francisco Linares, staff writer
Every March, Warren Buffett puts $1 million of his own money on the line to go to the person who accomplishes the 1 in 9.2 quintillion chance of creating the perfect bracket. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) states that “A group of researchers at the University of Hawaii estimated that there are 7.5 quintillion grains of sand on Earth. If we were to pick one of those at random, and then give you one chance to guess which of the 7.5 quintillion grains of sand on the entire planet we had chosen, your odds of getting it correct would be 23 percent better than picking a perfect bracket by coin flip.”
Many students at Carrillo fill out a bracket every year, hoping to be the first to complete a perfect bracket. Junior Jonathan Rath at Maria Carrillo was asked how successful he had been with his bracket predictions. Rath said he was “Very unsuccessful; I never do well.” Rath has been making brackets for about five years now and has never correctly predicted a championship game. Rath recounted how the very first game of the tournament busted his bracket - a ninth-seeded Creighton team eliminated an eighth-seeded Louisville team. “It was over from the start,” he said.
Despite Rath’s bracket’s early demise, his final matchup still had hope. His final picks were Duke vs. Auburn. Duke was heavily favored to win the whole tournament due to the standout freshman and a guaranteed first-round pick in the NBA draft, Cooper Flagg. “You can’t go against the man,” Rath said.
Austin Petrick, a junior here at Carrillo, has also been making brackets for a very long time. Petrick came extremely close to picking a winner a couple of years ago when he correctly predicted the final matchup. Petrick said, “It was the Tar Heels [UNC] against Villanova, and then I had the Tar Heels winning, but Villanova barely won.” The game he was talking about was a very iconic game in which Kris Jenkins hit a buzzer-beater in a tie game, resulting in a final score of 77-74. But this year, Petrick sadly had his bracket crash very early on when his pick, Saint John’s, was upset as the two-seed by the tenth-seeded Arkansas Razorbacks 75-66 in the second round of the tournament. Petrick was asked why he chose Saint John’s and explained, “My dad was hyping them up. He said they could beat Duke, and I watched a few short clips and I believed it.” When asked about his confidence levels before the tournament, Petrick said, “I was pretty confident, I thought they could do it.”
This year, the Florida Gators took on the Houston Cougars in the final game. Both are coming in as the number one seeds of their respective conferences. Both teams duked it out in San Antonio, Texas. In a back-and-forth game, both teams tied 12 times, and Florida only held the lead for a total of 64 seconds throughout the game. They still found a way to win. Houston is seemingly choking their lead due to turnovers. At the end of the game, Houston finished with nine turnovers, with four of them happening in the final two minutes of the game.
Within all the madness of this past March, one comes to see the beauty that lives in the chaos of a heartbreaking buzzer-beater that turns dreams into dust, and the beautiful Cinderella runs that captivate the hearts of millions every year. March is the time legends are made, and underdogs rise, inspiring us all. The unpredictability is what makes this madness so beautiful every year.