By Garrett Cook

March Madness is a college basketball tournament with 68 teams. Sunday, March 17th is when the committee announces the 68 teams that will be competing. There is a 1 in 9.2 quintillion chance that someone could correctly pick the winner of every game in the 64-team NCAA tournament. The first tournament was 80 years ago in 1939 with eight teams and Oregon won. In 1951, the field doubled to 16 and then kept growing. In 1975, the field numbered 32 teams. In 1985, it increased to 64 teams. In 2011, the current 68-team format was adopted. Since seeding began in 1979, North Carolina has been seeded first in a region 17 times, more than any other school. 

Followed by Kansas and Duke with 14 #1 seeds each, Kentucky has had 12. North Carolina has also played in 20 “Final Fours,” more than any other school. Since the NCAA tournament was expanded to 64 teams, #1 seeds have a won-loss record of 454-114, a winning percentage of .798. Surprisingly all four #1 seeds have advanced to the “Final Four” only once. It happened in 2008 when Kansas, Memphis, North Carolina, and UCLA qualified. Kansas won the tournament. Illinois has never won March Madness, but they got close to losing in the Championship in 2005. Last year the Illini made its 33rd all-time appearance in the NCAA Tournament.

The Illini men’s basketball team has a good chance to advance far in March Madness this year. The Illini had a 97-68 win over Michigan as I write this. Illinois is 18-6 overall and 9-4 in the Big Ten which has them at second place. The Illini are two games behind Purdue in the standings, but they only play Purdue one more time so Purdue will have to lose some games for us to pass them. The Illini are ranked number 14 in the nation and they keep going from rank 10 to rank 14.   The Illini’s best player in my opinion is Terrence Shannon Jr. In their last game vs Michigan, he scored 31 points and in the game before vs Michigan St, he got 29 points. Shannon is averaging 21 points per game. 

In the past older teams with experienced players have done better in March Madness than younger teams. The Illini have an older team with a lot of seniors and juniors. The Illini also have a lot of tall players with their tallest player being Colman Hawkins who is 6”10. The Illini have been struggling with making shots, but in the past two games they have been more accurate and Shannon has been on fire. The Illini have two big tests coming up against the 20th-ranked Wisconsin and the 2nd-ranked Purdue. The last time the Illini played Purdue we didn’t have Shannon and after the first half, we were down by 15. In the second we made a comeback and lost by 5. I hope that we win against Purdue. We play them next because it will be a home game and we will have Shannon.