Duke. North Carolina. Kansas. Kentucky. Gonzaga. The usual suspects come March are ready to play. But this year there were some lesser known schools that didn’t make things easy for the blue bloods. The 2019 iteration of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament tipped off on March 21 in arenas across the nation. The regular season came to the climax everyone had been waiting for, and boy did it deliver with the greatest of storylines.

After being the first one seed to be defeated by the sixteen seed UMBC Retrievers last year, the Virginia Cavaliers capped off the greatest redemption stories with their first national title. Their tournament run began much like last years as they trailed 16 seed Gardner-Webb by six at halftime of their first round game. But this time, the upset was not to be. The Cavaliers rallied to win the game. They would then get through Oklahoma and Oregon in their next two games. Then they found themselves in the Elite Eight against Purdue. Virginia trailed late but rallied again late to force overtime and eventually win. But the it was the their Final Four matchup against a hot Auburn team that garnered most of the headlines.

With less than ten seconds remaining and Virginia trailing by two, Guard Ty Jerome dribbled the ball off his heel then proceeded to pick it up and continue to dribble the ball. This by rule, should have been called a double dribble and the ball given to Auburn. But the referees missed the call and eventually Virginia would sink three free throws to win the game.

After the missed call Virginia went on to play Texas Tech in the National Championship game on April 8. It was a back and forth affair that saw the teams go into overtime where the Cavaliers would prevail 85-77. In a survey taken from March 20 to April 10 recorded 84 responses of WCHS students, zero picked Virginia to win it all. According to ESPN’s Tournament Challenge, only 8.4% of 17.2 million brackets created picked the Cavaliers to win the national title.