My graduate capstone project was a visual exploration of the 2017 NCAA Tournament that aimed to highlight the national involvement in the event, and the one thing that makes fans watch with excitement year after year: the underdog upset. I developed a new "cross bracket" that highlights the tournament's upset with breaks in the uniformity of what would otherwise be a pyramid pattern. Upsets are highlighted by red circles that vary in size depending on the size of the upset.
This project was inspired by a 1942 poem titled 'The Basketball Ides of March' in which the poet makes an argument for basketball as a beautiful drama "where hate is dead". He says that "with war nerves tense" basketball may be a healthy focus of our attention, something that can bring us together, that is not life and death.