On March 20th, 2025, the annual March Madness tournament begins. This year, there is unimaginable excitement around the tournament, with many exciting teams and players making the tournament this year. The teams with the most hype are the one seeds for the tournament, with Auburn, Florida, Houston, and Duke topping the bracket in 2025. Auburn and Florida rode high powered offenses to the tournament, as did Houston, who blew out many teams on the road to a Big 12 Conference title. Duke was carried to the top seed off the back of their star player, and likely #1 pick in the 2025 NBA draft Cooper Flagg. Flagg dominated the league this year and averaged 18.9 points per game.
The #2 seeds are all teams which have done fantastically well this season, St. John’s, won the Big East, and Alabama, Michigan State, and Tennessee, were all runners up in their conferences respectively. Iowa State, Texas Tech, Kentucky, and Wisconsin round off the three seeds, while Maryland, Arizona, Texas A&M, and Purdue round off the #4 seeds. Memphis, Clemson, Oregon, and Big Ten Champion Michigan are the #5 seeds, and Illinois, Missouri, BYU, and Ole Miss are the six seeds. Marquette, Saint Mary’s, UCLA, and Kansas will be at the 7 seed, and Louisville, Mississippi State, Gonzaga, and Connecticut are the eight seeds. Connecticut has a chance to win three titles in a row, something that has not been done since UCLA did so in the 1970’s. Creighton, Baylor, Oklahoma, and Georgia are the #9 seeds, and New Mexico, Vanderbilt, Utah State, and Arkansas will be the #10 seeds. North Carolina, VCU, Xavier, and Drake will be seeded at #11, and McNeese, Colorado State, UC San Diego, and Liberty are the #12 seeds. Yale, Akron, Grand Canyon and High Point are the #13 seeds, and Lipscomb, Montana, Troy, and UNC Wilmington are playing at #14 seeds. The #15 seeds are Robert Morris, Bryant, Wofford and Omaha, and the last teams in at #16’s will be Norfolk State, Alabama State, Mount Saint Mary’s, and Southern Illinois at Evansville.
The Southeastern Conference will make history when tournament play starts, as the only conference in college basketball history to have 14 teams receive a bid to play for college basketball’s ultimate prize. This is an unprecedented number, as South Carolina, and LSU were the only teams in the conference to miss the tournament.
The tournament will start with the round of 64, with the first game starting at 12:15pm, on March 20th, with Creighton vs Louisville, and the other games in the round will take place all day Thursday and Friday. The Round of 32 will be played on Saturday and Sunday, and the Sweet Sixteen will start on Thursday, March 27th, and finish up on Friday, March 28th. The Elite Eight will go on from Saturday, March 30th to Sunday, March 31st, and then the Final Four will take place on Saturday, April 5th, and then the finals will be played on April 7th.
