An average of 9.9 million people, according to ESPN, watched a women’s college basketball national title game on Sunday that didn’t feature the odds-on pretournament favorite, South Carolina, which had fallen to Iowa in the Final Four. No team seeded No. 1 on the men’s side even made the round of 8, the first time that had happened in the tournament’s current format.
It was an upset-laden, bracket-busting three weeks of games, filled with entertaining moments big and small. Here is what we learned from the March-into-April Madness.
Never bet against an underdog from New Jersey.
One spring after a swashbuckling St. Peter’s team (from Jersey City) sashayed its way into the men’s round of 8, Fairleigh Dickinson (from Teaneck) and Princeton (from … Princeton) fanned their own feathers. And they nearly were as iridescent as those of the Peacocks.
Though Fairleigh Dickinson lost in the second round, the Knights’ stunner of No. 1 seed Purdue in their first game reverberated throughout the entire tournament. That was especially true because it came just a day after Princeton’s stunner over second-seeded Arizona. The Tigers then knocked off Missouri to advance to the round of 16 before falling to Creighton.
The celebrations of pure joy in the immediate aftermath of what…
