March Madness 2025

March Madness is the NCAA college basketball tournament. Many people like to watch the games and fill out brackets of who they think will win the tournament. There are six rounds in March Madness. If you win a game, you advance to the next round. I will feature one game per round in this article.

Perfect Brackets

There has never been a perfect bracket (A bracket that correctly picked all 63 games). The odds of a perfect bracket are 1 in 9.2 quintillion if you pick randomly. If you know a thing or two about basketball, the odds are 1 in 120 billion. The longest a bracket stayed perfect was for 49 games in 2019. All the perfect bracket numbers in this article are from ESPN’s tournament.

Men’s Round of 64

The Men’s Tournament kicked off March 20th with Louisville vs. Creighton. The 9-seed Creighton Bluejays beat the 8-seed Louisville Cardinals, starting the tournament with an upset. According to ESPN, 13,339,089 brackets were ruined after the very first game.
• Biggest upset: 5-seed Clemson’s loss to 12-seed McNeese; 5-seed Memphis’s loss to 12seed Colorado St.
• Perfect brackets remaining after first round: 121.

Men’s Round of 32

In the second round, the defending champion school, UConn, faced 1-seed Florida. This was a good matchup. UConn had the lead for most of the second half, until the last 3 minutes when Florida made a 3 and gained momentum. With 30 seconds left, the score was 66-72 Florida. Between the two teams, 14 points were scored in the last 30 seconds of the game because UConn had to foul Florida in order to get possession of the ball and score points. Despite UConn’s efforts and a buzzer-beater 3, Florida won 75-77, stopping UConn from earning their third consecutive championship.
• Biggest upset: 2-seed St. John’s loss to 10seed Arkansas.
• No perfect brackets remain.
• Only 4 conferences advance to the Sweet Sixteen, mainly the Big Ten, Big 12, and the SEC.

Men’s Sweet Sixteen

In the Sweet Sixteen, one of the most exciting games was 10-seed Arkansas vs. 3-seed Texas Tech. After trailing for the entire second half, Texas Tech made a three-pointer with nine seconds left to tie the game at 72-72. In overtime, Texas Tech beat Arkansas. No upsets.
• Lowest seed still in the tournament: 3-seed Texas Tech.

Men’s Elite Eight

The four games in the elite eight all turned out to be blowouts by the 1-seeds. This is surprisingly only the second time ever in the NCAA when all the final four teams were 1-seeds.
• Biggest blowout: Duke (85 points) vs. Alabama (65 points).

Men’s Final Four

In the Final Four, Duke played Houston. The final score was 70-67 Houston. Duke had the lead for the entire game, but Houston tied it with 19 seconds left and went on to win. They came back from a 14-point deficit, defeating Cooper Flagg and the Blue Devils.
• Winners: Houston and Florida.

Championship

The championship was an incredible and action-packed game that came down to the very last shot. The Florida Gators beat the Houston Cougars 65-63. Florida had their first lead of the second half with 46 seconds left. Houston couldn’t even attempt their last shot because it would have been a double-dribble.
• 1st time SEC team won since 2012.
• 7th largest comeback in Men’s March Madness history (12 point deficit).

Women’s Round of 64

The Women’s Tournament started March 21st with Michigan vs. Iowa State. The Michigan Wolverines beat the Iowa State Cyclones 80-74. 627,776 brackets were ruined after the first game.
• Perfect brackets remaining after first round: 112.
• Biggest upset: 7-seed Oklahoma St.’s loss to 10seed South Dakota St., and 7-seed Vanderbilt’s loss to 10-seed Oregon.

Women’s Round of 32

A good game in the round of 32 was 5-seed Alabama vs. 4-seed Maryland. With twelve seconds left, Alabama had the lead, until Maryland made a three to tie the game. Maryland won the game in double overtime, 111-108.

• 33 perfect brackets left after the second round
• Biggest upset: 4-seed Baylor’s loss to 5-seed Ole Miss, 4-seed Kentucky’s loss to 5-seed Kansas St., 4-seed Ohio St’s loss to 5-seed Tennesee.

Women’s Sweet Sixteen

In the Sweet Sixteen, the 1-seed South Carolina Gamecocks played the 4-seed Maryland Terrapins. Maryland was close to eliminating the first 1-seed of the tournament but fell short by 4 points. The end score was 71-67 South Carolina.
• Perfect brackets left after Sweet Sixteen: 1.
• Biggest upset: 2-seed NC State’s loss to 3-seed LSU.

Women’s Elite Eight

UConn destroyed USC in the Elite Eight. USC was missing their star player, JuJu Watkins, due to a knee injury. This explains why they didn’t put up more of a fight. USC was the first 1-seed to lose in this year’s tournament. UConn, led by Paige Bueckers from Minnesota, is the favorite heading into the final four.
• Biggest upset: 1-seed USC’s loss to 2-seed UConn.
• No perfect brackets remain.

Women’s Final Four

Both of the final four games were huge blowouts. South Carolina beat Texas by 17 points, and UConn destroyed UCLA by 34 points. These two incredibly strong teams will face each other in the championship game.
• Biggest upset: 1-seed UCLA’s loss to 2-seed UConn.

Championship

The UConn Huskies beat the South Carolina Gamecocks, 82-59. South Carolina couldn’t pull off a second championship in a row. Paige Bueckers, Azzi Fudd, and Sarah Strong all helped lead UConn win it’s twelfth Women’s National Championship title. Paige Bueckers, who is from Minnesota and played on the Hopkins Highschool basketball team, is expected to be the No. 1 pick in the WNBA draft.