3. Ninth Seed Defeats Expectations
The Wichita State Shockers were a Ninth Seed expected to be watching the Final Four from their dorms and apartments going into their second round game against Pitt. They won that game which was a minor upset, then played the goliath Gonzaga, who they calmly defeated. Suddenly, a win against La Salle and this Cinderella team was an expected blow out by Ohio State. But this is why the games aren’t played on paper. Wichita State won by four points to propel them to their second Final Four appearance ever, eventually losing by four and controlling the game against the future National Champions. This proved that Cinderella stories are allowed to play past midnight.
2. Two Fourth Seeds Advance to Final Four
Syracuse and Michigan were two teams who, in my opinion, were looked over on Selection Sunday and pushed all the way back to the Fourth Seeds in their respective divisions. Syracuse ran over their first two opponents and then beat the One Seed Indiana to advance to the Elite Eight. Their newly developed and hard to beat zone defence, along with the expertise of Jim Boeheim, led them to beat a Marquette squad and send them to their fifth Final Four in school history. They played another Fourth Seed, Michigan, in the Final Four. Led by the NCAA Player of the Year Trey Burke, they had a Cinderella run themselves. Rolling over opponents wasn’t too hard in their first two games, but then the One Seed Kansas stood in their way. Michigan was up for the fight and won by a slim two points. Next, a twenty point win over Florida rushed them into the Final Four where they beat Syracuse by 5, sending them to compete for the National Championship, where they would lose by 6.
1. #WinforWare
On a day where the infamous Duke Blue Devils were coming to oppose Louisville, Kevin Ware (a Cardinal) felt fine in the morning hours. By the end of the night his shattered leg would be the talk of the tournament and the story of the sports world. Kevin Ware would become the most tweeted about subject in 2013, and the most inspirational story for a championship team in quite a long time. Twitter not only exploded with sympathy, but the whole world exploded thinking about this poor kid who would have surgery the next day and have to watch his team from the sidelines. #WinforWare was used as motivation to not only win the game against the Blue Devils, but win the entire tournament. The Louisville Cardinals would do just that, and Kevin Ware would be the last player to cut down the net after his team won the National Championship.
