Years after their completion, individual NCAA Basketball Tournaments are remembered for two things: Cinderella stories and powerhouse national champions. The 2016 NCAA Men’s Basketball regular season was absolute chaos; no one team seemed to be able to pull away from the rest of the pack and cement themselves as the indisputable best team in the nation. The Kansas Jayhawks eventually claimed this spot, thanks to their hot play in the second half of the season. However, they were by no means a sure bet to hoist the trophy. It was assumed that this year’s postseason would be fantastic, a tournament filled with parity in the lower rounds and as the round got deeper and the field shrunk, one where any good team could emerge as a national champion if the right things fell in their favor.
Although the 2016 NCAA Tournament did not have any deep tourney Cinderella runs, it was packed with first weekend, early round upsets. And no, 10-seed Syracuse making the Final Four does not count as a Cinderella story. A power conference team with a storied history can be an underdog, but not a fairy tale. The first round was packed with exciting underdog action, highlighted by 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15 seeds Northern Iowa, Arkansas-Little Rock, Hawai’i, Stephen F Austin, and Middle Tennessee State, respectively, upsetting their opening round opponents. Each result was crazy in its own right but none more so than Middle Tennessee State’s upset of popular champion pick Michigan State. Unfortunately for these teams, the clock struck midnight on their hopes of a magical, game-by-game, tournament run as each team lost their second round matchup, ending their season.
By the end of the tournament, the Villanova Wildcats were hoisting the trophy, having just beaten the North Carolina Tar Heels off of a buzzer beater three point shot by Kris Jenkins, the first National Championship game-winning buzzer beater since 1983, bringing an absolute marvel of a National Championship game to a close. For the Wildcats, this was essentially a story of redemption. Despite their impressive overall basketball history, the Wildcats were previous owners of only one national title, back in 1985. In part because of this, Villanova never seems to claim as much of the public spotlight as some of the “blue-blood” schools like their opponent, the Tar Heels. In 2015, the Wildcats entered the NCAA Tournament as a regional number one seed and were desperate to make some noise, to prove to the world that they were a team deserving of respect. Sadly, it was not to be. The Wildcats were upset in the second round by North Carolina State and star player Kat Barber. Fast forward to the 2016 season. Many of the Wildcats returned, including senior and four year captain Ryan Arcidiacono. They were undeniably hungry to avenge the embarrassment of 2015 by securing their school’s second ever national championship. Now, months later, it’s safe to say they succeeded. Looking at their NCAA Tournament alone, they played in only two close games, against arguably the two top teams in the tournament, number one seeds Kansas and North Carolina in the Elite Eight and National Championship, respectively. Outside of those two, the Wildcats could not be stopped, mercilessly crushing their opposition on the scoreboard. After one of the best games, let alone championships, in NCAA Tournament history, everyone is talking about the Villanova Wildcats.
Another NCAA Tournament has come to a close and thanks to an impressive slew of bracket-busting first round upsets and a remarkable National Championship game, 2016 looks to be a good year in the annals of college basketball history.
