When you think of Occidental College, chances are you probably don’t think about our sports programs. We’d like to dispel that narrative. The March Madness college basketball tournament is in full swing. For bettors and casual fans alike, it’s a chance for fans of all schools involved to have something worth rooting for (and something to drink to).
Coming off a historic season, the Occidental women’s basketball team took home the victory at the SCIAC Tournament Championship. Their first SCIAC title since 2011 makes it certainly a meaningful one, having ended a 13-year SCIAC victory drought.
Overcoming a small roster and the victory drought, this team truly fulfilled a great underdog story. Though our Tigers were eliminated early in an NCAA Division III play, their participation in the tournament signals the big idea of March Madness as a whole — exposure and glory.
Considering the Tigers’ small roster and lack of recent success, an NCAA tournament bid was unlikely. Many seniors on the team have been through many losing seasons, making victory even sweeter. Their seemingly improbable SCIAC tournament victory and NCAA national tournament bid symbolize what makes college basketball so special: Everyone has a chance.
March Madness may be one of the greatest ideas ever conceived in sports history. The tournament is a massive, 64-team affair in which teams compete in a winner-take-all game to move on to the next round. Since the highest-seeded teams take on the lowest-seeded teams every round, the early slate of games consists of matchups that are generally lopsided. However, due to the one-match format that the tournament has, upsets are quite common. This can lead to particularly memorable and often hilarious games, such as in the 2018 tournament, when the top-ranked Virginia Cavaliers lost to the lowly UMBC retrievers in one of the most absurd upsets in the history of college sports.
Simply put, March Madness is a tournament where anything can happen. A team of future NBA superstars can dominate in one round but get knocked out in the next round by a bunch of guys from a suburban Rhode Island college who are going to be selling real estate in a few years. While mere single-game upsets are entertaining for even those not particularly interested in basketball, they are a mere microcosm of March Madness’ greatest gift to the world: the Cinderella Story.
Everyone loves a good underdog story in sports, and there may be no better place to find such stories than March Madness. The tournament has been home to numerous ‘Cinderella runs’ over the years in which seemingly average teams make incredible runs throughout the tournament, often besting blue-blood programs along the way.
The 2009-10 Butler Bulldogs men’s team is a prominent example of such a run. Starting in January 2010, wunderkind head coach Brad Stevens led a smattering of unranked recruits on an unprecedented 25-game win streak, defeating top-seeded Syracuse and Kansas State en route to the championship game. Although Butler would ultimately come up two points short of a national championship against the Duke Blue Devils, the Bulldogs would go down in history as one of the most beloved teams to ever grace the hardwood.
One of the more memorable Cinderella runs in NCAA history occurred more recently, during the 2022 tournament. St. Peter’s University, a small Jesuit college in New Jersey with fewer than 4,000 students, seemed out of place amongst the likes of the mighty Kentucky Wildcats team. Many fans expected the Peacocks (cool name, right?) to be a mere steppingstone for one of the most prestigious programs in basketball history. However, in a twist straight out of a Disney movie, St. Peter’s bested Kentucky thanks to the heroics of Doug Edert.
Edert certainly doesn’t look the part of a basketball player — with his floppy hair and 80s-style mustache, he looks more like a used car salesman wandering onto the basketball court. But appearances can be deceiving, especially when Edert lit up Kentucky’s vaunted defense for 20 points toward an 85-79 Peacocks victory. While St. Peter’s would eventually bow out in the Elite Eight against the esteemed UNC Tar Heels, Edert and his merry band of misfits proved that even today, March Madness is truly anyone’s game.
Sports can really be a thing of beauty, and not just for nerds like us. Given the expansive platform of March Madness, dreams really do come true on the court — just as quickly as they can be shattered.
Through the upsets and the buzzer-beaters, a larger-than-life story of the pinnacle of team success prevails. The push to be part of something bigger, to contribute to a team competing for glory where everyone stands to gain temporary legend status.
Sport, especially the swings of basketball, imitates the up-and-down ride that is the game of life. With persistence, patience and perseverance, the goals of life can be assimilated to those of just any game. And as the great Wayne Gretzky once said, “you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”
Philosophical whimsy aside, these are the things that draw viewers to March Madness time and time again.
So, ladies and gentlemen, fire up those brackets and betting apps, turn on that television, and grab a cold (non-alcoholic) beverage. The sun is shining, and the season of champions is officially upon us.
Contact Mac Ribner and Ben Petteruti at ribner@oxy.edu and petteruti@oxy.edu
march madness really does have the potential to bring the beast out of anybody. when i noticed clemson was losing to baylor i quickly took a commercial break to craft a voodoo doll of chase hunter and stab it in the balls a lot of times with a steak knife. it didnt really do anything but sometimes, it’s just about school spirit. you picking up what im putting down? signing out