NCAA Tournament: Round One, Day One

Posted on | March 21, 2008 | No Comments

March Madness hasn’t lived up to its name… not yet.

After day one of the tourney, there weren’t any major upsets. The biggest upset was 6th seeded USC losing to 11th seeded Kansas State. But there was almost a huge upset.

We might already be seeing that the PAC-10 was overrated this year. UCLA, Washington State and Stanford blew out their opponents but they didn’t really have much of a test. The two teams that did have a test – USC and Arizona – failed miserably. So while USC may seem like an upset, it could be that the Trojans were just overrated all year. Today the PAC-10 could very well lose another game when Oregon takes to the court today. So the top of the PAC-10 looks good but the rest of the conference looks weak.

The best game of the day didn’t payoff in the end (unless you’re a Duke fan).

15th seeded Belmont nearly beat Duke but in the end the Blue Devils won by a single point. That would’ve been one of the biggest upsets in Tournament history. But it just didn’t happen. Not that Belmont didn’t have their chances. Because they did. They had two possessions where they could have built on their one point lead and then they had two possessions when they were down by a single point.

But Duke held on, as did every other obvious favorite, except USC.

We’ll see if today has any major upsets in store. The leading candidates are: Vanderbilt (4 seed) and Siena (13 seed) and perhaps Drake (5 seed) and Western Kentucky (12 seed). Of course, some major favorite may fall and that would really add to the madness. Maybe we’ll see a 1 or 2 seed fall.

The games have all been great, but hopefully there will some real madness today. If not, then the match-ups down the road will be even more exciting.

Related posts:

1. NCAA Tournament: The Madeness Has Arrived
2. NCAA Tournament: 2nd Round
3. NCAA: No Surprises in Round 2… Yet
4. NCAA: An Overview of the NCAA Tournament Bracket
5. NCAA: Reacapping the 1st 2 Rounds of the NCAA Tournament

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