This time a year ago, I believe I was calling for the head of EA Sports due to their awful rendition of a college basketball game. This year, I'm calling for praise because they got much better on the second try. NCAA March Madness 2003 has the look and feel of NBA Live 2003, but like the NCAA, is more of a raw talent rather than a finished product. I like the player model graphics during the game's cut scenes, but when you're out on the court, the player models almost appear to be blocky and rough around the edges. The player's animations themselves are fine, but it's the actual graphics that are a slight letdown. The crowd appears to be realistic, and moves and follows the game fairly well, but again, the audience needs to be smoothed over a bit.

The good part of the audio comes from the music. Much like its college football counterpart, March Madness 2003 features plenty of fight songs and other pep band music, along with team-specific chants that make college basketball great. Calling the game is Brad Nessler and Dick Vitale. At first, I thought I'd have to turn off the audio since Vitale can get a little annoying, but I actually think he wasn't used enough. It sounds strange, but he was only used for quick hits throughout the game, rather than his expanded analysis of the game.

I mentioned earlier NCAA March Madness 2003 reminded me of the Live series, and it's most evident in the actual game. I actually prefer March Madness more because it feels more realistic as a whole. The big reason I say this is because not every shot goes down on offense, and you can actually play defense. That's right, you can actually block shots as a regular thing, including slam dunks. EA Sports included its new Freestyle Control with this year's version, although things are tamer when handling the ball since college kids are still learning how to play the game. The main thing to emphasize is that this is how I believe basketball games should be made. Offense sells the tickets, but defense wins championships.

The big reason I was upset with EA Sports last year was because they didn't have a Season or Dynasty mode. Instead, they just had Exhibition and Tournament. With this year's March Madness there's even more than I could possibly ask for. The game modes included are Play Now, Single Season, Dynasty, NCAA Tournament, the EA Sports Maui Invitational, and Create-A-School. The Maui Invitational is just a shorter rendition of the NCAA Tournament. The only big complaint I have about the tournaments is that there are never any upsets. The whole beauty of March Madness is that some no-name school can make it to the Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight or Final Four. Instead, only the top seeds advance, which takes the fun out of the whole NCAA tourney.

NCAA March Madness 2003 contains four different skill levels: Junior Varsity, Varsity, All-Conference, and All-American. However, you can also change different variables to increase the difficulty of the game, such as interceptions, steals, blocks, lay-ups, inside accuracy, jump shot height, and many more. Of course, the quality of your team and your opponent can also determine the difficulty.

The controller configuration for NCAA March Madness 2003 is fairly similar to other basketball games. If you haven't played with the Freestyle Control yet, it's basically controlling your crossovers and post-up moves with your right analog stick. The game menus seemed a little slower than I've been accustomed to seeing with EA. Also, there is no feature to save the draft class for NBA Live, although in retrospect, Live didn't have the feature to receive a draft class either.

I may have come off sounding like I don't like March Madness 2003, but that's far from the truth. This is a much better version compared to last year, and I think it rivals its NBA counterpart. The only thing that's really lacking is an online feature.