Opinion: March Madness 2024

In each single elimination bracket, the 68 best men’s and women’s teams in the country compete for a National Championship. This year, there have been many intriguing storylines and upsets in both the men’s and women’s brackets of March Madness.

As always, both brackets had their fair share of Cinderella stories, most notably in the men’s bracket. 11th seed North Carolina State, led by center DJ Burns who many grew to love throughout the tournament due to his elite play and vibrant personality, made it to the Final Four where they would lose to Purdue. The biggest story was the University of Connecticut (UConn) repeating as National Champions even after losing some of their best players from last year’s National Championship team like Jordan Hawkins and Andre Jackson Jr. and defeating Purdue despite Purdue Center Zach Edey scoring 37 points. Both Hawkins and Jackson were drafted into the NBA in 2023, and this was the first time that a team repeated as National Champions since Florida in 2007.

There were high expectations for the home teams, USC and UCLA. coming into the year due to a successful recruiting class, but both failed to deliver and both missed the men’s tournament.

Although there weren’t as many upsets in the women’s bracket, most of the exciting storylines came from the women’s bracket. The final four teams were North Carolina State, UConn, Iowa and South Carolina. UConn and Iowa had two of the most well-known stars in the tournament, Paige Bueckers led UConn to a final-four appearance before ultimately losing to Iowa. The women’s bracket came down to South Carolina and Iowa, led by superstar Caitlin Clark who broke many records including the NCAA Division 1 scoring record for both men and women. This was a monumental game for women’s sports as an enormous 18.7 million people tuned into the National Championship game that saw South Carolina defeat Iowa 87-75 despite Iowa’s Caitlin Clark scoring 30 points to cap off an undefeated season.

The local teams USC and UCLA both had respectable runs in the women’s tournament.

USC, led by freshman phenom Juju Watkins who averaged 27.1 points per game this season made it to the Elite Eight where they would lose to UConn.

UCLA didn’t have any one player in specific that stood out but played more as a team, they lasted until the Sweet 16 before falling to the defending champions, Louisiana State University.