It didn’t take long for the majority of 2014’s March Madness brackets to be ruined. The hope that early upsets would not become a trend quickly faded in favor of rooting for chaos, and the unexpected continued to happen throughout the tournament.
Real life cats correctly predicted UConn as national champions
Cats supporting dogs, all in the name of bracket glory.
Kate Pfeiffer
Well, mostly unexpected. After all, we did have cats predict the University of Connecticut as the national champions, and that’s just what ended up happening. UConn became the first-ever No. 7 seed to make the championship game, much less win the whole thing.
Specifically, this cat, Winifred Burkle, predicted UConn to win it all:
Winifred doesn’t deserve all the credit, however, because UConn only made it to the Final Four thanks to the prognostication of one Kitty Sanchez:
While it's wonderful that these two teamed up to correctly identify the March Madness champion, we do have to admit that their bracket had a few issues, just like that of everyone else who participated this year. While they correctly identified a few upsets along the way, Kitty and Fred saw their bracket marred by the likes of Dayton and Mercer, as well as an ugly second round that nearly blew up everything.
In the first round, Kitty was right about Florida (1) over Albany (16), Pittsburgh (9) over Colorado (8), Syracuse (3) over Western Michigan (14), Stanford (10) over New Mexico (7), Virginia (1) over Coastal Carolina (16), Memphis (8) over George Washington (9), North Carolina (6) over Providence (11), UConn (7) over Saint Joseph’s (10) and Villanova (2) over Milwaukee (15). That’s nine out of 16 matchups, which is not bad, but not great, either. Adjusting for cat and the chaotic year, we can probably deem it a success.
Sure, their feline Final Four wasn't pretty, but they at least picked the right winner. Fred nailed Arizona (1), Gonzaga (9), San Diego State (4), Baylor (6), Wisconsin (2), Wichita (1), Kentucky (8), Saint Louis (5), Louisville (4), and Texas (7) on her side of the bracket, netting her 10 of 16 correct in the West and Midwest regions. That’s 19-of-32 overall in the first round for Fred and Kitty.
In the second round, things fell apart even more for Kitty. The only correct pick she made from the first round to advance was UConn. Granted, that’s the important one of the bunch, but it didn’t look good at the time. That also meant they were the only possible correct pick she could make in the Elite Eight as well. Winifred fared a little better, with four of her eight matchups coming out correctly thanks to Arizona, San Diego State, Baylor and Louisville. Her Elite Eight didn’t go any better than Kitty’s, though, with only Arizona making it from her side of the bracket.
The only Final Four selection the two correctly predicted was UConn, but again, that was enough. They had UConn beating VCU and then Arizona to become national champion and instead the Huskies went through Florida and Kentucky, but the end message -- UConn as tournament champ -- was on point. Now Fred and Kitty can brag to all of their cat friends about the time they correctly picked an underdog national champion, and really, that’s precisely why we fill out brackets in the first place, isn’t it?
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