Yesterday, out of sixteen NCAA Tournament games, the lower seed won seven of them. Of those seven, two were major upsets: Murray State over Vanderbilt, which some people could have seen coming, and Ohio over Georgetown, which hardly anyone did. Three games reached overtime, two reached double overtime, and one (Murray State) had a buzzer beater. It was, in our minds, the most thrilling first day of the NCAA Tournament in recent memory. Now we get to do it again today.
The highlights of the first half today, the afternoon games, is probably a hotly debated Temple-Cornell matchup at 12:30. But no one thought yesterday’s early afternoon games looked particularly fascinating, and all three turned out terrific. The joy is that you don’t know. That’s always the joy.
Most important: How’s everybody doing in The Sports Section NCAA Bracket? Well, no one got all sixteen right, or even fifteen: There’s a five-way tie for first with fourteen. Seventeen of the 469 entrants forgot to fill out their bracket altogether, but hanging out near the bottom of people who did is … well, our Mattoon Green Wave bracket. We batted .500 yesterday, with only eight of sixteen. We’ll have you know, though, that if everything breaks right the rest of the way, we still have a chance to win. So there.
Games kick back up in an hour and a half. Why are you still at work?