Cinderella didn’t take long to arrive to the dance, did she?
If there’s anything the first slate of games in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament taught us, it’s that March Madness is alive and well. Half of the teams played in the first day of the tournament and just as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, we already saw five games decided by one point – a first in NCAA history – to go with a handful of major upsets that have burst millions of brackets.
Sorry, but if you had Baylor and Iowa State advancing past UAB and Georgia State, respectively, you can’t have a do-over. Just throw your bracket in the trash and be on your way.
Both Baylor and Iowa State – third seeds in the tournament – were expected to make deep runs in the tournament. Sadly, their tourney run ended even before it began when both teams succumbed to a pair of 14 seeds who were given 500/1 odds each to win the tournament. This won’t make UAB and Georgia State any more appealing from a betting standpoint, but their respective one-point squeakers over Baylor and Iowa State is living proof that nothing is certain in this tournament.
Baylor and Iowa State’s respective losses will sting for a while, but neither will likely feel the pain of 6 seed SMU, which lost to 11 seed UCLA in one of the most inexplicable ways imaginable. Up two in the dying seconds of the game, SMU forward Yanick Moreira was called for goaltending on a three-point attempt by UCLA’s Bryce Alford. Was it goaltending, though? That seems to be the talk of the tournament so far and whether you agree on the call or not, UCLA moved on and SMU is now out of the tourney. Heartbreaking stuff.
Even games that the higher seeds won had their fair share of drama. 3 seed Notre Dame survived 14 seed Northeastern, 69-65; 4 seed North Carolina barely hung on to beat 13 seed Harvard; and 5 seed Utah outlasted 12 seed S.F. Austin, 57-50.
From a gambling perspective underdogs ruled the roost in the first day of the tournament. Of the 16 games that were played today, 12 underdogs covered the spread and of those 12, four won their games outright. Oh, and we’re just in first full day of the tournament.
Like Dick Vitale always says, “There’s a reason why it’s called March Madness, baby!”
