March Madness

It is a common misconception that the NIT is a "loser's tournament" related to the NCAA tournament; the NIT tournament is in fact independent and predates the formation of the NCAA tournament. All titles except 2002 Leipzig won with Venus Williams as partner. If a team fails to qualify for the NCAA tournament, they sometimes participate in the National Invitation Tournament. Williams was also on Punk'd when Williams was trying to save a Punk'd problem kid played by Rob Pinkston until Ashton Kutcher came out from the SUV with a baby. If at the end of the tournament two players have the same point total, a tie is often broken by the total number of total points scored in the Championship Game. These controversies re-emerged in April 2005 as MTV announced plans to broadcast a reality show around the lives of Serena and Venus Williams. The point total steadily increases by round in order to reward those players who correctly picked teams that would go further in the tournament. However in 2005 she won her seventh Grand Slam event defeating Maria Sharapova and Lindsay Davenport en route to the title.

Points are assessed in different ways, and one example is give below:. Disappointing performances during 2004 have been cited as proof of this lack of focus. Whoever accumulates the most points by accurately predicting the outcomes of the games wins the grand prize, most often pooled from the entrance fees. Some believe that she is far too concerned with her fashion and acting careers, and has not focused enough recently on her tennis. Entrance fees vary. Controversy has arisen over Williams's level of dedication to the sport. Many people fill out tournament brackets in office pools. The injury also forced her to pull out of the 2004 Summer Olympics.

Each player cuts a single strand off of the net for themselves, commemorating their victory. On August 1, she announced her withdrawal from the Rogers Cup due to the same injury. As a tournament ritual, the winning team cuts down the net at the end of the game. On July 30, she withdrew from her quarterfinal match against Russia's Vera Zvonareva with a left knee injury joining her sister who had earlier pulled out due to a sprained right knee. The four seeds play out the tournament through single eliminaton until a National Champion is crowned. She reached the final of Wimbledon once again, but lost to the 17-year-old Russian player Maria Sharapova, heralded as one of the greatest young talents the game has seen. The eventual winners of the four regions then meet at the Final Four in a predetermined location. Serena withdrew from Australian Open 2004 to continue rehabilitating her left knee.

The teams are seeded from 1 to 16 in 4 regional groupings around the country. Williams' older sister, Yetunde Price, was murdered on the morning of September 14, 2003, by gunshots as she passed by in a car driven by a man in the Compton area. The 65 (including the 2 teams who compete in the play-in game) participating teams are announced by the selection committee on Selection Sunday, brackets. The Williams siblings are the first two women in Grand Slam history to square off in four consecutive finals. During March Madness, many people enjoy predicting the outcome of the tournament. Even this so-called "Serena Slam" is not a true Grand Slam—tennis purists demand that a player collect all four major titles in a single calendar year to be deemed to have achieved a Grand Slam—it was still a remarkable and rare accomplishment, made all the more remarkable for the fact that Serena had to beat her sister each time. Today, both the IHSA and NCAA license the term for their respective tournament. When Serena beat her sister Venus to win the Australian Open on January 24, 2003, that was only the sixth time a woman has held all four of tennis' major championships at the same time, and the first since Steffi Graf in 1994.

Courts later decided that "March Madness" could not be exclusively protected by either organization as it had entered into "dual-use" to describe both championship events. At Wimbledon in the 2003 tournament, Serena Williams became back to back champion, by defeating Henin-Hardenne in the Semifinals, and her sister Venus in the Finals on July 5, with a score of 4-6, 6-4, 6-2. In the 1980s the NCAA began to use the term to describe its championship tournament. Henin-Hardenne commented: "Everybody's happy today but the Williams sisters". Henin-Hardenne was responsible for two of Serena's three losses in 2003 (all on clay). Porter, an official with the Illinois High School Association, coined the term in 1939 when writing about his state's high school basketball championships. Among boos and catcalls, frustrated Serena lost to Justine Henin-Hardenne of Belgium (Venus lost to Vera Zvonareva in the fourth round). H.V. For the first time since January 2002, the Grand Slam final did not read Williams-Williams at the French Open in June 2003.

The term is now used in reference to both the men's and women's tournaments. Her feat was coined the "Serena Slam". The tournament takes place during March and April, and the term refers to the frenzy it ignites among the sports fans and gamblers. She won the Australian Open in 2003, her fourth straight Grand Slam singles title becoming the fifth woman ever to hold all four titles after Connolly, Court, Martina Navratilova and Steffi Graf and only the ninth woman ever to win all four Grand Slam events. This was not deemed a Grand Slam by tennis purists, as the four tournaments were not won in the same calendar year. March Madness is a popular colloquial term for the annual NCAA basketball tournament in the United States. She stated that she believes that Serena's powerful groundstrokes could be negated by extending the rallies and also hitting "junk"—keeping the ball low to make it harder to hit powerful shots. The rest of this article covers the use of the term in reference to the NCAA basketball tournament tournements also known as the final four championship.. Martina Navratilova, in an article in June 2003, stated that, given equal equipment, at her peak she would have been able to beat Serena.

In England, the phrase March Madness may refer to wasteful spending at the end of a budget year. The main weaknesses in her game, similar to her sister Venus, include relatively weak volleying and, because she attempts so many winners, she can occasionally commit large numbers of unforced errors. Disambiguation: "March Madness comes from the phrase 'Mad as a March Hare'. Serena is also very mobile for her size and power, unlike some of the earlier big hitters in the women's game (for example, Lindsay Davenport). Sixth round- 11 points for predicting National Champion. Her serve is also extremely powerful—in sheer speed, comparable to some of the male players on the tour. Fifth round- 9 points per winning team. Against most opponents, her sheer power is enough to win easily, forcing them back behind the baseline to hit their shots, at which point she is able to hit equally powerful winners.