School’s March Madness tournament a success

For the second year in a row, the Large Gym has been filled with basketball games to match the annual March Madness occurring throughout the nation in college basketball. The only difference is, you do not have to be a 6’11”, 260 pound prodigy to participate in this tournament.

The 32-team tournament features teams of four going head-to-head in single elimination games, with the last team remaining receiving a $50 Nike gift card. Each team can have a maximum of two players who play on a school basketball team.

Games occur at lunches and tutorials and are self-refereed (except for the finals). With each round eliminating half the remaining teams, more and more students are coming to watch the increasingly competitive games. What started as a few low stakes games has turned into an important school-wide competition. The tournament is moving towards completion, but the date of its final game is still to be determined

“Honestly, the gift card does not even matter,” said junior Kevin Couch, who is on the team Mo Buckets with seniors Jack Xie and Gabriel Fong and sophomore Harrison Fong. “I just want to win the tournament for pride. I want to show everyone what our team can do. I am confident we can go all the way and win it all.”

Couch will face a lot of challenges in order for his team to win the tournament.

“There are a lot of good teams in this tournament,” senior Jatin Mohanty of the team ‘95-’96 Bulls said. “A lot of teams that may be expected to lose early could go far in the tournament. Still, I know my team has the talent to get first place.”

Despite the talent on many of the teams, no win is guaranteed. After all, Cinderella teams are not just in the actual March Madness tournament.

“We may not be favored to go very far in this tournament,” junior Gautham Arunkumar of the team OG Freshman Team said. “But we do not need to be favored to win in order to actually win. We might as well be the underdog in every game; we can still go very far in the tournament.”

With each progressing round, the stakes get higher and the talent pool gets better. It looks like our very own March Madness tournament is rivaling the nationwide college basketball March Madness for the best March tournament in the country.

“This tournament has been a lot of fun,” Couch said. “I am looking forward to the rest of our games.”