March Madness is a tournament that takes place through the month of March and the first week of April. Division I teams can qualify for the tournament by winning the tournament of their division or by being voted in by the NCAA.

There are 7 rounds in March Madness: the first four which consists of the 8 lowest seeded teams; the first round which consists of the 32 teams playing their first elimination game, followed by the “Sweet 16,” the Elite Eight,” the “Final Four,” and the championship game. In this year’s tournament, all of the #1 seeds were knocked out in the Elite Eight round.

Teachers participated in supporting SDSU during the tournament by wearing apparel of the school and used their superstitions to give the team good luck. For example, Mr. Carr never washed his San Diego St hoodie during the tournament.

San Diego State won their elite eight game at the last second versus Creighton. There was a watch party at Viejas Arena and student Bao Banh (24’) attended the game.

“The game was really good,” said Bao Banh (‘24), “It was really intense in the last seconds of the game because we were losing. When the buzzer went off for the end of the game everyone went crazy in the arena.”

San Diego State hit a buzzer beater in an effort to win their final four game against FAU. The final score of the game was 72-71.

This was the first time in San Diego State history that they reached the championship game. They were considered underdogs going into their Sweet 16, Elite eight, Final four, and championship games against Alabama, Creighton, FAU, and UConn, respectively.

Mr. Carr attended the final four game versus FAU and experienced the game winner in real time.

“It was crazy getting to see the buzzer beater in person,” Mr. Carr said, “the fact that most of the arena was filled with San Diego State fans and that we had never been in that situation before made the experience even crazier.”

The teams in the championship game were San Diego St and UConn. UConn came out victorious with a final score of 76-59. Even though they didn’t win, it was still a very historic run for SDSU due to the fact that they had never been to a championship before this year’s tournament..