LAKEWOOD RANCH (SNN-TV) – Little to no perfect brackets remain after a wild few days of March Madness, one of the biggest upsets and bracket busters came last night, courtesy of the Ivy League.
Princeton, the 15th seed, knocked off second-seeded Arizona 59-55 in the opening round of the NCAA tournament Thursday afternoon in Sacramento, marking the third straight year and the 11th time in tournament history that a 15 has beaten a 2. The Tigers victory gave the Ivy League its first tournament win since 2016 when Yale beat Baylor.
Suncoast resident and early 1980’s Princeton guard, John Smyth, experienced the jubilation of an upset win back in 1983, when the Tigers defeated Oklahoma State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, 56-53. Smyth spoke of the larger than life memory that is being apart of March Madness.
“Everything’s magnified, everything is bigger than life. As a kid, you think about all these teams and seeing the tournament, and always wanted to be apart of a bigger type of basketball exposure. That’s what it is. The fanfare playing there, these teams you’ve learned about and heard about all these years. But once the game starts it becomes just like anything [else]. You don’t know if there’s 300 people in the gym or 30,000. You get into it and you try to do your best out there.”
Princeton will look to win two games in the tournament for the first time since that 1983 season, when they clash with the other Tigers in this scenario, the University of Missouri, tomorrow at 6:10pm on TNT.
