The First Round of March Madness NCAA Tournament came to a close after the final match between TCU and Seton Hall, with TCU winning by an exciting 27 points. 

Early afternoon on Thursday (March 17, 2022), the first round of games began with a bang. Michigan and Colorado State fought to the very end with a not so close game: Michigan pulling ahead and winning with an eleven point lead (75-64). 

Eleven seems to be the lucky number because the next two games were also won by eleven points- Providence (66-57) and Memphis (64-53) both advancing to the next round. 

As predicted Baylor pulled ahead and crushed Norfolk State, same with Tennessee winning over Longwood and Gonzaga beating Georgia State, but things soon fell apart for the higher seeds. 

The first upset of the tournament was Richmond versus Iowa. The first time tournament team, Richmond Spiders, beat Iowa in a very close game (67-63). A few games later, Kentucky and UConn were overtaken by lower seeds. No. 1 seed Kentucky lost to St. Peter’s (no. 15) while UConn lost to no. 12 New Mexico State. Both higher seeds played lazy basketball and had trouble sinking shots the entire game, these games destroyed a lot of brackets. 

UNC pulled through and showed Marquette what they are made of, and won with an incredible 22 point lead. Even more incredible is the 27 point lead that Kansas had over TSU. 

There were more close games with Creighton versus San Diego State, Arkansas versus Vermont, and UCLA versus Akron. Creighton and UCLA both won by 3 measly points, and Arkansas won with a weak lead of 4 points. 

On Friday, the higher seeds seemed to pull themselves together after watching Kentucky lose the day before. Auburn, Texas Tech, Purdue, Duke, and Arizona (all top 3 seeds) did not let their opponents get anywhere near them all game. All five games were high scoring and ended as expected, with a lot of bitter feelings towards Kentucky for not pulling through.  

Wisconsin (3) was down for most of the game against Colgate (14), but pulled it together in the second half and ended with a seven point lead. Villanova and Delaware played a close game in the first half, but Nova overtook them in the second half due to their superior defense and incredible shots. 

Ohio State beat Sister Jean’s Loyola Chicago with a fairly close game. There were three more upsets: Miami beat the higher ranked USC, Alabama lost to Notre Dame, and Iowa State overtaking LSU in the second half. Illinois, Michigan State, and Houston played as expected and beat their competition, except Michigan State was extremely close and ended with only a one point difference in score. 

After the first round, there were zero remaining perfect brackets (thanks Kentucky) across all major bracket challenges.