I love this feature for multiple reasons. First of all, I am a huge KJ Maura fan. I'm a huge college basketball fan. March Madness is probably my favorite time of the year. And on top of all that, I'm from Maryland. I'm from Baltimore County. This school that some of my friends attend, 30 minutes from my house, just became the first 16 seed ever to beat a 1 in the NCAA tournament.
Although Maura may not have been the leading scorer or "most standout player" in the tournament, I gravitate to him because of the way he plays the game. He is a hustle player. He's undersized. He has had to work for everything he's ever gotten. He earned a scholarship to a lower, Division I school after barely being recruited out of Puerto Rico. Nobody thought he would ever play against, much less defeat No. 1 overall University of Virginia. He's just a winner.
But aside from my bias toward Maura, this is a good feature because it stands alone. It was actually written before UMBC had even qualified for the NCAA tournament. It was written just ahead of the America East conference final, where UMBC had to go up against Vermont, who they had lost their last 23 match-ups against.
Jason Shaffer or whoever at the Baltimore Sun had the idea to do this story must have known something we didn't. Somehow they featured a kid who was about to become a household name two weeks before it happened.
With all that said, this story is still quality even if you didn't know anything about what happened in the NCAA tournament. These are the reasons why I have selected this as my feature story.
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