The NCAA Tournament can get pretty wacky, pretty quickly. Here's a quick overview of some of the oddities surrounding this year's edition of March Madness.
- The University of North Carolina system has three different schools in the tournament—No. 1 North Carolina, No. 15 UNC-Asheville and No. 13 UNC-Wilmington. All three are competing in different regions, and UNC-Wilmington has the tough test of in-state opponent No. 4 Duke in the first round.
- The smallest school in the tournament is No. 16 Holy Cross, boasting an enrollment of 2,904 students, which is roughly the size of a large high school. By comparison, the largest school in the tournament is No. 3 Texas A&M, with an enrollment of 52,449 students.
- No. 13 Hawaii will have announcers and statisticians equally confused, as it has two juniors who both stand 6 feet 11 inches, weighs 235 pounds and have similar rebounding abilities. What’s even scarier is their names; one is named Stefan Jankovic, the other Stefan Jovanovic. In addition, Hawaii has players on their roster hailing from five different countries.
- No. 12 Yale has qualified for the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 54 years,the longest stretch between appearances by any team in the tourney this year.
- Kiko Stavrev, a freshman forward for No. 15 Weber State, is quite the journeyman. His hometown is listed as Sofia, Bulgaria, but he prepped at Myerscough College in London, England. He now calls Ogden, Utah, home as he plays for the Wildcats.
- No. 1 Oregon boasts senior forward Chris Boucher, who has been dominant for the Ducks. What’s even more impressive is he had never played a game of organized basketball until the age of 19.
- Wichita State has at least one player at every height between 6 feet and 6 feet 11 inches. The Shockers certainly don’t discriminate due to height.
- There is only one set of twins in the tournament this year: freshmen Avery and Anthony Brown of UW-Green Bay.
- It looks like the Jesperson family of Merrill, Wis., might have a tough time figuring out who to cheer for this year, as two of their sons are playing in the tournament for different teams. Paul is a senior at Northern Iowa and David is a junior at UW-Green Bay.
- For all you Wisconsinites out there, the state is represented by players at 12 schools; Wisconsin, UW-Green Bay, Providence, Iowa State, Cal State Bakersfield, Middle Tennessee State, Buffalo, Northern Iowa, Vanderbilt, Connecticut, Iowa and Maryland.
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