NCAA Tournament
As of Monday night, it is official. The Florida Gators are back on top. Many blogs, papers, and tweets about the game and tournament as a whole. I must say every year there is talk about the best teams and how the tournament was seeded. It is a polarizing event for many who are fans of a mid-major program to the fans of a Blue Blood program. Thankfully this is a blog and many terms could be used to describe the game tonight and every other game, for me, I’ll keep it simple.
The bracket is set up between 72 teams 64 of whom play official tournament games while four teams, known as the last four, play to see who gets the last available seeds. No matter how I explain it I cannot be referred to as a professional, my bracket was not perfect. Not that anyone has ever had one but this year was special the best teams were the best. Few upsets happened and even the largest upset according to seeding in my opinion wasn’t worth the label. #10 Arkansas beat #2 St. Johns in a battle between legendary coaches at two famous schools looking for a revival.
The final four. Let’s jump ahead cause well I’m in charge of this blog. So the final four were all #1 seeds and sure the committee that decides tournament seeding was of course happy, however the fans, the fans wanted more. Thankfully the games were electric. The #1 overall team was Auburn and they were cut down by the soon-to-be-crowned champions Florida. Then went Duke the favorite to win the Tournament who were beat in last minute efforts by the tournament runner up’s Houston Cougars. Houston and Florida were ready and excited for the game which was clear when the teams started the final with multiple logo three attempts, showing the had some yip’s. What happened next when they settled down? Houston jumped ahead, the Courgars were able to get up 12 with space against the Gators but just like every game before Florida was not done. With about 7 minutes remaining there had been 11 ties and just 2 lead changes. As time continued to tick the Gators remained in striking distance and when it mattered they took the lead. Houston fought hard and made it close. Yet in the end they couldn’t even get a shot off at the end of the 40 minute battle. When the buzzer sounded, the Gators chomped the nets down and were named the 2024-2025 NCAA Tournament champions. Just incase you were wondering I did indeed get first place in my bracket for some extra credit.
The Champions
