I want nothing more to sit here and tell you guys the first round was awesome. I spend all year watching college basketball to get to noon on Thursday when everything matters and the country is locked in. I want to spin zone this and say the first round really wasn’t that bad. I don’t necessarily care about upsets, because it makes the Tournament better with good teams. I care about close games, sweating out the score with 30 seconds to go and see who can be a hero. That’s what makes the first round elite. 32 games where you expect something.

It all sucked. 

There were 3 games where a team had the ball and a chance to tie from three. They went 0-for-3. 

You expect some blowouts in the first round. You expect 1s and 2s to roll. There was an argument that we all should have saw this coming

But it’s still one game in March. We couldn’t even get a sweat from the 13s or 14s. Most of the second halves were pointless in terms of score to moving on. I disagree with any notion that this has something to do with the transfer portal or NIL. A year ago we had Yale, James Madison, Duquesne, Grand Canyon and Oakland winning first round games. This is the first year with superconferences but I don’t know if that has an impact on something like this. I just hate the immediate blame to NIL and portal when we have evidence of upsets a year ago. Difference was a year ago we had good first round games. Samford/Kansas went the full 40. Oakland/Kentucky was awful for me, good for everyone else. We had OT in Northwestern/FAU. Dayton has the ridiculous comeback that made Doogs cry on camera. Colorado/Florida was AWESOME. We had none of that this year so far. 

I want nothing more than just good games today and tomorrow. It should happen, the slate is awesome. We need it to happen though. We can’t go 4 days without a memorable moment. Right now the most memorable moment is McNeese winning and Will Wade going nuts? That was a game they kicked Clemson’s ass. We haven’t had that shot yet that we can all point to or that one play where Twitter blows up. But, yeah, proof this is the first worst round ever is out there.