Dahlia Selig
The beginning of March means one thing for college basketball fans: March Madness is just around the corner.
March Madness, the National College Athletics Association Division I Basketball Tournament, is the annual, single-elimination NCAA tournament that features 68 women’s teams and 68 men’s teams, each in their respective category. The teams are competing for a chance to hoist the national championship trophy above their heads.
The tournament is played in seven rounds. The “First Four” is the opening round, where the eight lowest seeded teams play four games and trim the playing field to 64.
A committee then ranks remaining teams from one to 16 in four regions: East, West, Midwest and South. In the first round, the main bracket begins. This bracket consists of the one-seeds playing the 16-seeds, the two-seeds playing the 15-seeds and so on.
In subsequent rounds, winners advance and losers are eliminated. This continues until the championship game, in which the winner is then dubbed the champion of college basketball.
For students at Aragon, many have personal ties to schools, which influences who they support.
“Personally, I’m rooting for UConn,” said junior Jane Reidy. “My cousin goes there.”
The UConn Huskies, located in Mansfield, Connecticut, currently sits atop the women’s rankings with a record of 30-0. UConn also won the women’s March Madness tournament in 2025.
Not far behind UConn this season are UCLA, South Carolina and Texas, with records of 27-1, 29-2, and 28-3 respectively.
As of now, the Huskies are favored to win the women’s tournament, with many similarities being drawn to their performance last year. They have remained undefeated, an impressive feat so late into the season.
There are many teams which will certainly get into the tournament, but with the tournament bracket being huge, it’s hard to predict every team that will make it.
As for the system for how teams make it in, the tournament bracket consists of 31 automatic qualifiers, who qualify by winning their conference tournaments. In addition to these 31 teams, 37 teams receive at-large selections, awarded by a committee, which reviews the ratio of wins to losses, as well as the strength of the schedule each team has played.
In the men’s tournament, the Duke Blue Devils currently sit at the top, with a record of 27-2 this season. Last season, Duke narrowly lost to the Houston Cougars in the “Final Four” round, missing the championship game, where the Cougars went on to lose to the Florida Gators in the championship.
“I am rooting for Duke because they lost last year with Cooper Flagg at the helm,” said sophomore Ishan Mookerjee. “I hope Jon Scheyer gets a chance to redeem himself from last year.”
Flagg, who played for Duke last year, was picked first overall off the board in the 2025 draft. He was selected by the Dallas Mavericks, where he currently plays.
Scheyer is the Duke basketball coach, who faced backlash for not winning the championship with a player like Flagg leading the team last season. This season, Scheyer and the Blue Devils hope to finally take home the trophy.
The men’s rankings currently consist of Arizona (27-2), Michigan (27-2) and Iowa State (24-5) as two, three and four respectively. Florida, the reigning champions, are on a 9-game win streak and as of now ranked 7th in the nation with a record of 23-6.
“Florida is also one of the teams I support,” Mookerjee said. “Xaivian Lee is a great prospect currently.”
Lee is one of Florida’s star players, averaging around 11 points per game.
At Aragon, apart from family connections, there are many other factors that spur students to watch the tournament.
“Most colleges I root for are from my viewing interests,” Mookerjee said. “I like to watch them since their brands of basketball are unique.”
The tournament kicks off on March 15 for the men’s division and on March 17 for women’s.
