The March Madness Guessing Game

This blog post was inspired by the Xaviers, Robert Morrises and Woffords of the NCAA tournaments.

March Madness is here again and that means many things. The tournament means brackets, cinderellas, checking scores on your phone in class and, of course, all those obscure teams. Are you ever intrigued that you probably couldn't name what state a team is from or that team's mascot for about a third of the field of 64? Hell, I still don't even know where Davidson is.

To give you a little perspective, the schools I'm talking about fall into one of two categories:

1. The nobody
This basketball squad always hails from a non-BCS conference, (say hello to the MEAC!) probably won an automatic bid, likely has a ridiculous mascot and either is an exciting upset team or a #16 seed waiting to get trounced in the first round.
Example: Murray State Racers

2. The under-the-radar
This team almost always makes the tournament, but isn't in a BCS conference. You know they're solid but when asked, "hey, where are these guys from?" you reply "uhhhh, dude, you didn't know?" to avoid an embarrassing hit of pride on your college hoops fandom.
Example: Xavier Musketeers

Below I've compiled the list of all the teams from this year's tournament I consider to be "obscure," only writing the name of the school as it appears on the bracket.

Lehigh, Murray St, Xavier, Temple, Wofford, Morgan St, AR-Pine Bluff, Siena, ODU, Sam Hou St and Robert Morris.

And those are only the little known schools whose names don't really give away their location. Here are some more schools whose location you know only from their team name.

N Iowa, New Mexicot St, Ohio, Vermont, N Texas, E Tenn St, New Mexico, Montana and Richmond.

The casual fan may be wondering, "Why do we have all these random schools in the tournament?" and the answer is that these tiny schools from no-name conferences are what make March Madness so great. Everyone loves the excitement and randomness of the tournament and these schools provide the miraculous cinderella stories. You may only hear about them once every 5 years or so, but these schools leave a lasting mark on the tournament. Anyone heard of George Mason?

I included a 9 question poll to test your knowledge of the team that made the Big Dance this year. They are in order from easiest to hardest, in my opinion, and the answers are below.



















1. a 2. c 3. a 4. a 5. a 6. c 7. c 8 c 9. b