As we enter March, we start to brace ourselves for the madness that is about to ensue within the month. Every basketball fan can’t wait for Selection Sunday to roll around, as it releases the bracket to the most thrilling sports event you can wish for, March Madness. 68 teams will get their shot at winning the National Championship for D1 basketball.

What is March Madness though? March Madness is the tournament to decide on who is the best Division 1 college basketball team in the Nation. It is a single elimination tournament played in the Month of March and early April. There are 6 rounds in the tournament, the Round of 64, Round of 32, Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final 4, and the Championship game. In March Madness, there are 4 different sections of teams in the tournament; East, South, Midwest, and West. Each section has 16 teams, each team having a seed. The higher the seed you are, the lower the seed your opponent will be. For example, the 1 seed Alabama team will play the 16 seed Texas A&M Corpus Christi. 

There are no givens however, you may first pick all of the higher seedings to win and advance, because since they’re the higher seeding they should be the better team. However, this is March MADNESS, anything can happen. We have seen 16 seeds beat 1 seed, 15 seeds go to the Sweet 16, and 25 point comebacks. Most people pick around 3-5 upsets to happen in the first round. 

As stated earlier, there are 68 teams in March Madness, yet only 64 teams actually play in the tournament. This is due to the play in games or the “first four”. Before the actual tournament starts, 8 teams will compete for four open spots in an attempt to keep their March Madness hopes alive. 

Over the course of the years, only 15 teams have managed to win March Madness multiple times, with the leader being UCLA with 11 championships. Recently, there have been multiple different winners, University of Kansas, Villanova University, University of Virginia, and Baylor University as well.