[Editor’s Note: You can find coverage of the first round here. And vote now for the Elite Eight!]
Welcome to March Mugness, the greatest caffeine competition in the history of startup-y sports. Or something like that.
With the Sweet 16 in the books, we look ahead to these star-studded Elite Eight matchups:
Downtown Durham
No. 1 Beyu Caffe v. No. 4 Cocoa Cinnamon
Killer C’s (Chapel Hill/Carrboro/Cary)
No. 2 Carolina Coffee Shop v. No. 3 La Farm
Downtown Raleigh
No. 1 Morning Times v. No. 6 Videri Chocolate
Burbs + NC State
No. 2 Guglhupf v. No. 4 Liquid State
Voting is now open! The polls for the Elite Eight will close this Wednesday (March 24) at 5 p.m. ET. This round of voting will determine our Final Four. So go vote!
Now let’s recap a thrilling Sweet 16.
Downtown Durham
No. 1 Beyu Caffe 32, No. 7 Monuts 20
No. 4 Cocoa Cinnamon 36, Mad Hatter’s Café 13
Coming off an upset of No. 2 The Durham Hotel in the first round, Monuts battled bravely but was ultimately overwhelmed by the clinical performance of top-seeded powerhouse Beyu. Main Street’s finest will take on No. 4 Cocoa Cinnamon in the Regional Final after the latter made short work of Mad Hatter’s Café, unfazed by Mad Hatter’s strong bakery menu.
Killer C’s (Chapel Hill/Carrboro/Cary)
No. 2 Carolina Coffee Shop 24, No. 1 Café Carolina 16
No. 3 La Farm 27, No. 4 Gray Squirrel 13
While there won’t be any Franklin Street celebrations for the UNC men’s hoops team this spring after the Tar Heels bowed out meekly in the first round of March Madness, Franklin Street landmark Carolina Coffee Shop kept alive its hopes of cutting down the March Mugness nets with an eight-point win over Café Carolina. La Farm is gearing up for its new location in RDU Airport with another strong win, this time over Gray Squirrel.
Downtown Raleigh
No. 1 Morning Times 28, No. 7 Yellow Dog 11
No. 6 Videri Chocolate 26, No. 4 Sir Walter Coffee 14
It might not be the first place you think of to grab a coffee, but sixth-seeded Videri continued to prove that everything goes better with chocolate by toppling No. 4 Sir Walter Coffee, which will never again be heard from in March Mugness. (Too soon for a Walter Raleigh “missing” joke?) Still, Videri will have its hands full in the Regional Final with top-seeded Morning Times, which cruised to an easy victory over No. 7 Yellow Dog.
Burbs + NC State
No. 2 Guglhupf 41, No. 8 Jubala Coffee 7
No. 4 Liquid State 30, No. 3 Starbucks/Page Road 11
Perhaps suffering a hangover from celebrating its stunning, buzzer-beating upset of No. 1 seed Bean Traders in the first round, eighth-seeded Jubala Coffee never answered the bell in a dominating 41-7 beatdown by No. 2 Guglhupf. No. 4 Liquid State will try to be the first team to slow down Guglhupf—which has outscored its first two opponents 93-25—in the Regional Final.
For coverage of the first round, click here.
Not sure what we’re doing here? Let us explain:
We’ve put together a 32-“team” bracket of coffee shops that we’ve visited as part of the beloved Where’s Pete? weekly contest from June 3, 2019 through March 30, 2020, when the pandemic forced us outside coffee shops and into taking pictures of restaurant exteriors while fully masked. So really, this is a great window into the Time Before.
The squads have been broken into four regions: Downtown Durham, Downtown Raleigh, The Killer C’s (Chapel Hill/Carrboro/Cary) and Burbs + NC State. Hey, when one tries to divide a Triangle into four equal parts, some re-shuffling is going to happen. Each coffee shop in each region was seeded 1-8.
Let the best (or most popular, anyway) coffee shop win!
