Finally! The upset/buzzer-beater thriller combo that helps ignite this tournament. Hard to imagine there will be a more entertaining game or a better ending than Western Kentucky overtime win over Drake. And I enjoyed every second of it. That being said, it ain't quite the same when the upsets come at the expense of second-tier powers like Drake or Gonzaga rather than the big lumber. The real fun of this first week is rooting against every bit as much as it is rooting for. And while teams like Gonzaga and Butler have become legitimate mainstays of the tournament, we really can't work up much enmity toward them. Not like we we can toward smug Duke (though getting less smug by the second) or others among basketball's college royalty. So I won't really be satisfied this week until one of the true giants goes down.

UPDATE: And now, with UConn out, they have. That's more like it.

So Devin didn’t have to run, but I don’t think he can hide. He got it exactly right in his pre-Tournament analysis of his Duke team. It can lose to anyone and almost certainly will—if not to West Virginia this weekend then soon after. Coach K looked like he was already moving on, contemplating the U.S. match-ups against Spain and Argentina this summer in Beijing.

Belmont provided pretty much the only drama of the day, though there were a few decent entertainments (Xavier-Georgia, West Virginia-Arizona). Still, not a single upset, if you don’t count K State—and I don’t, 'cause if I picked it in my pool, it couldn’t have been much of a surprise. The much anticipated frosh showdown between O.J. Mayo and Michael Beasley showdown was basically a bust; while Beasley flashed his talent after being hampered by foul trouble early in the game, Mayo is not yet ready for prime time and I’d recommend he remain at least one more year at USC before he leaps to the NBA.

I proved as prescient about my alma mater, Cornell, as Devin was about his. I said Cornell would fare better than it did in its last turn around the Big Dance floor 20 years ago when it lost by 40 points to Arizona—and the Big Red did, losing by only 24 points to Stanford. Our resident Jayhawk, Mr. Coatney, had a lovely line, waxing sentimental about this tournament and how it reconnected all of us to our college days—nostalgia at play across the nation. Of course, that’s hogwash. While it may be true for him, Devin and other diehards from a handful of basketball schools, it’s not really what this madness is about for the rest of us. It’s just another gambling fix—easier to access than your local casino and far less complicated than poker—which is why, as folks get eliminated from contention in their pools, TV ratings will plummet.

Frankly, even for us genuine sports fans, the show this week is only as good as the upsets and the buzzer-beaters. Other than Belmont’s near-miss, there wasn’t very much compelling about yesterday’s games—certainly nothing to keep me from flipping to Dallas and the second most exciting basketball game of the evening, with the Celtics completing a remarkable Texas sweep. And I also spent time in Nashville where the U.S. was playing a critical soccer match. Long ballyhooed Freddy Adu, still just 18 years old, is beginning to live up to his hype. He scored twice, bending two free kicks just like Beckham, as the U.S. punched its Olympic ticket to Beijing with a 3-0 thrashing of Canada.

Nevertheless, I’m game for 12 more hours today. But I fully expect that when the clock strikes midnight, I’ll still be mooning over Belmont-Duke and what might have been.

Devin, for you an Omen: In 2003, Kansas barely survived an opening round game to Utah State, a tough 15 seed. That Jayhawk team, you'll remember, went all the way to the championship game (of that game we Shall Not Speak). So there's that for you.

For me, there's...nothing, really. Not yet. Kansas rolled, as every 1 seed in this tournament ever does, now and forever, amen. Not to disrespect the Vikings or anything, but Portland State, along with the other #16 seeds, is almost certainly not one of the top 64 teams in the country. Seth Greenberg, I feel your pain, and as a basketball fan, I'd much rather see a Kansas-Virginia Tech first round matchup. As a Kansas fan, of course, I'm happy Tech spent Thursday beating up on Morgan State in the NIT. On the other hand, Kansas was up 13-3 before the game was 5 mins in, and it was all downhill from there--when I saw in the game update that Tyrel Reed, the 10th man in Bill Self's 7-man rotation, had entered the game in the first half, I moved on to the Georgia game. When your first round game is so routine they don't even show highlights on Sports Center, it makes you start to wonder if it really happened at all...

Other than the Duke-Belmont excitement, the night pretty much went according to form. Only two lower-seeded teams advanced, both from the Big 12, and neither was a major upset; Texas A&M, to my mind better than a 9 seed anyway, won what's essentially a tossup, the 8-9 match, over Brigham Young, while Kansas State, playing only a couple hours from home, beat USC, mainly because K-State's two one-and-dones, Bill Walker and Michael Beasley, were better than USC's one, O.J. Mayo. Wonder if Tim Floyd still thinks one year of O.J. resulting in a first-round tourney exit was worth the complete loss of his dignity. 

On to day two, though before we go, in honor of Baylor's first-round exit and A&M's first-round success, we look back at what was the year's most exciting game before that Duke-Belmont barn-burner: Bears over Aggies in 5 OTS: