March Madness — The Finals 

Title image credit: The Associated Press, cleveland.com

March Madness is a yearly tradition for millions of Americans—a time when people can watch the greatest college basketball players compete for a prestigious title. In this article Moksh and Adi break down the mens and womens march madness finals. 

By: Moksh and Adi 

March Madness is a yearly tradition for millions of Americans—a time when people can watch the greatest college basketball players compete for a prestigious title. This year’s March Madness finals, through the phenomenon of Caitlin Clark, brought great attention to Women’s basketball.  

This year, the men’s finals matchup was the Purdue Boilermakers versus the defending champions, the Connecticut Huskies. In the Women’s finals, Iowa faced off against South Carolina. In this article, we will discuss our thoughts on both of these final matchups, and the challenges the teams faced along the way. 

Women’s finals 

Iowa, led by Catlin Clark clinched a spot in a relatively close game. Iowa felt like watching the Catlin Clark show, with her dropping 41 points. The game plan really felt like Iowa would pass to Clark, screen, and let her shoot threes. In the later stages Iowa would send 3-4 players to the paint attempting multiple drives, and if that did not work they would pass back to Clark in an attempt to make a three. Iowa’s game against UConn was much more enjoyable to watch as both teams had multiple players shoot and make shots. Both teams played really good defense and this felt like Iowa’s first real chance to lose a game. South Carolina, despite being undefeated in the regular season, still felt like the underdogs compared to Iowa and Catlin Clark. Yet, S.C. played a wonderful game against Iowa. It really felt like S.C used their entire roster, rotating players constantly to keep them fresh, while Iowa kept the same players out. The score distribution in S.C was much tighter, showcasing better teamwork which prevailed against the seemingly one man team of Catlin Clark. 

Men’s finals

Similar to the way Caitlin Clark was integral for Iowa, Zach Edey was the main contributor for Purdue. Through the NCAA tournament,  7’’ 4’ Zach Edey averaged 24.9 points, 12.2 rebounds, 2.2 blocks, and 2.1 assists per game on an impressive 62.5% shooting from the field. Edey and Purdue won most of their games by a sizable margin. While watching the games, I noticed his dominance, and how powerless the opposition was to stop him. His teammates would pass near the basket, and Edey would simply shoot a hook shot over his opponents. When Purdue reached the finals, they played against UConn. UConn was the defending champion, and likewise defeated their opponents easily. Unlike Purdue, UConn’s team was a more well-rounded team with scoring spread more evenly between players. In the final against UConn, Zach Edey scored 37 on 15 of 25 shooting out of Purdue’s total 60 points. Watching this game, I noticed that UConn let Edey score and instead focused on removing his teammates and their three point shooting from the game. I thought the logic behind this was to tire out the main offensive contributor and defensive anchor of Purdue, and this strategy worked, and by the end of the game, Edey looked visibly exhausted, resulting in the UConn Huskies winning 75-60. Throughout the game, UConn appeared to be the better team. They were more cohesive as a unit on both the offensive and defensive ends, and there was more equal contribution in scoring as well. In the end, Purdue lost because they relied too heavily on one player. After all, basketball is a team sport, and one player cannot win it themselves.