Basketball championship: March Madness
The basketball players are all nervous but excited, waiting for the competition to start. Just half a second after the blow of the whistle, the ball handler of the two teams jump high, trying to hit the ball to their teammates. The crowd of fans cheer with excitement around the court. As the first player touches the ball, the match begins.
is a basketball championship which occurs every spring in the US. 68 teams compete with each other, followed by a huge group of fans. This championship is divided into male and female groups. Every year, the winning results are surprising and unguessable.
Because the result of the teams winning are unpredictable, fans have a hard time betting on the correct outcome. No person has ever gotten all the results correct. Gregg Nigl predicted the closest with 49 rounds correct, in 2019.
It first was started by Henry Porter. The first match was in 1939 and there were only undefined that played against each other. As the American sports field expanded, the teams in the March Madness increased. Today, there were 68 teams.
The 32 teams that won in the Division I conference tournaments are automatically selected to play. The other 36 teams are chosen based on their winning and losing records.
The first round eliminates four teams, and reduces the teams from 68 to 64. Those teams are called the First Four. This makes the rest of the elimination easier. In every tournament, two teams compete. The winner stays and the loser will be eliminated. Then, the winning team compete with another winning team. So every time the teams decided by two, from 64 to 32 to 16. This continues until there are only four teams left. The last four teams that are not eliminated are named the Last Four.
After hours of playing, there was finally a winning team. Every basket was followed by the loud cheers of the fans. Now the audiences were shouting for the winning team. Not all fans were happy about the outcome, but after all, the match is over.
The winning team will move on to the next round to play another winning team. As the competition gets better, the stakes get higher until a winner will be declared.