With UConn winning the National Championship on Monday, beating San Diego State 76-59, the March Madness tournament had plenty of surprises. There were no one, two, or three seeds in the Final Four with the highest seed being four-seed UConn. 

This surprised Prospect senior Colin Diversey, who had UCLA winning the whole thing. 

“Honestly, I was happy to see so many upsets, even though I didn’t expect a Final Four like the one we had in this tournament,” Diversey said. “In my bracket, I had one-seed Alabama and two-seed UCLA in the National Championship.”

Put in context, the last time there were zero one seeds in the Final Four was in 2011. However, this wasn’t the biggest shock of the tournament. That honor belonged to 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson defeating one-seed Purdue in the 1st round of the tournament. 

“That was a pretty special moment in tournament history. I just remember being totally shocked, while also laughing at Purdue,” Diversey said. 

This was only the 2nd time in March Madness history that a 16 seed beat a one seed. The other time was in 2018 when the UMBC Golden Retrievers beat the Virginia Cavaliers.

Fairleigh Dickinson would go on to lose in the next round to nine-seed Florida Atlantic University (FAU), which turned out to be the Cinderella team of the tournament. FAU proceeded to make the Final Four, beating four-seed Tennessee and three-seed Kansas State along the way. Even the biggest FAU fans probably didn’t see this coming. 

“They almost seemed like a team of destiny at times to me. I wasn’t sure how they kept winning games but they somehow always did in the end,” Diversey said. 

UConn was dominant on their way to a 5th National Championship in program history. Their combination of big athletic men and elite shooting guards was just unstoppable in this tournament. 

“At times, they looked like an NBA team on the court. I was really impressed by their team and they played some of the best college basketball I’ve seen,” Diversey said. 

With this March Madness done and written into the history books, it’s time to be patient and wait till next year for more special tournament moments.