The madness is almost here.
In just one more month, the annual college basketball tournament “March Madness” will begin and the top teams in the country will get to play in epic games and viewers will witness big moments, huge comebacks, and unprecedented upsets and possibly some gruesome injuries such as the Kevin Ware incident last year, viewer beware.
Back in the day, Seattle University would make appearances in the big tournament but the university eventually dropped out of Division 1 play. But now we are back and have the chance to get there again. Earlier this year, both our men and women’s soccer teams made it to the NCAA tournament and the men even managed to advance one round.
Last year, the men’s basketball team didn’t come close to the tournament finishing the season at the bottom of the WAC. The women however were the WAC champions and came just one game shy of reaching the tournament.
Soon both teams will have their shot to make it as the WAC tournament looms near with the winner getting an automatic bid to join the madness.
The men’s team has just five regular season games remaining, three of which will be played at Key Arena. They currently are in the middle of the pack in the WAC as the fifth place team in the standings with a 4-7 conference record. Although it is not the most impressive record, one of those wins came against first place Utah Valley with a score of 71-57 this past Thursday. This shows that our team can compete against anyone and certainly will have its chance to possibly win the WAC. Their next game is this Thursday at Key Arena against third place Grand Canyon University.
The women’s team has just four games remaining on their schedule before they head into the WAC tournament. Like last year, they have played better than the men and are currently sitting at third place in the conference with an 8-4 conference record. It is very unlikely that they will repeat as conference champions with the end of the regular season approaching so soon, but they will still have a good position to win in the tournament and hopefully get their place in the NCAA tournament that they came so close to just a year ago. The senior trio of Ashley Ward, Kacie Sowell and Sylvia Shephard has had tremendous careers at Seattle University as they each surpassed 1000 career points. It would be great to see them get their shot at madness.
Each year I have watched March Madness and filled out a bracket. And each time I see teams win games they shouldn’t and shock the world. I’m not going to say I expect Seattle U to win it all but if either of our teams makes it in; it would sure be exciting to see them win a game or two. If there’s going to be another surprising team, why not us?
