NCAA Basketball Scores 2012: First Day in Round of 64 Anything But Madness

The first day of when the true madness kicked off was as exciting as a re-run of a crappy TNT sitcom or whatever they show on TruTV.

There was a grand total of two upsets out of 16 games and even one of them wasn’t very surprising.

The No. 12 seeded VCU Rams beat No. 5 Wichita State 62-59 in one of the only games that came down to the final minute. They have won a ridiculous five NCAA Tournament games in the last two seasons now so this wasn’t your typical 5-12 game and the upset wasn’t very “shocking.”

The only true shocker was No. 11 Colorado holding off No. 6 UNLV 68-64. Yet if you took a glance at the way the Runnin’ Rebels had played of late…you’d realize this was one of the coldest teams in the entire tournament.

I guess you could call No. 1 Syracuse’s 72-65 nail-bitter over No. 16 UNC-Asheville an exciting game. But two horrendous calls by the refs essentially gift-wrapped the Orangemen the game and let the proverbial air out of the balloon.

In all, 10-of-16 games were decided by double-digits and four others were in the 6-to-9 range after a furious comeback attempt at the end was too little, too late. Only the Wichita State-VCU game was decided by three points or less.

This is not what we have come to expect from the madness and it means one of two things…

1. Mid-majors are Weak This Year

Aside from teams like No. 5 New Mexico and No. 6 Murray State that earned a high seed with spectacular regular seasons, upset favorites like No. 12 Long Beach State, No. 12 Harvard and No. 13 Davidson all failed to get the job done.

Or….

2. Friday Will Be Bonkers

It’s the law of the tournament, right?

There has to be X amount of buzzer-beaters and upsets every year. Thursday used up all of the boring games and now Friday is going to be one epic day if the basketball gods truly do exist.

I think I can speak for all college basketball fans when I say let’s hope its option No. 2.

Click here for the updated bracket. 

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