12 hours, 4 games, 1 unavoidable truth: There is nothing better than the first day of March Madness

Buffalo, New York
 — 

The thing that always gets me on the first day of the NCAA Tournament are the school buses, the ones chugging along stuffed with kids. Because it is, of course, Thursday morning and this is what ordinary people do on a Thursday morning.

Kids go to school. Grown-ups go to work or pick up their laundry or go to the grocery store. Not everyone, apparently, is spending the day in a 12-hour marathon of hoops.

What a pity for them.

Because while the final day of the NCAA Tournament is the most exciting, the best day is the first. No matter where you are, no matter how the games play out, it is a glorious timeout from reality. Not a 30-second one, either. A full beautiful timeout

Presumably people here in Buffalo went about the business of their day. It is impossible to know. The first day of the tournament is also sort of like going on a casino bender. No windows. No way to know what’s happening outside for 12 hours. Walk in from the daylight, walk out to the late night. In between, it could be 80 and sunny, or 20 and gray (although let’s be serious; it’s Buffalo. It was cold and gray).

In the grand basketball scheme of things, not much happened in Buffalo. Cinderella didn’t find her way here. Probably didn’t have a parka. Saint Louis scored the only upset by seed, but 8-9 games don’t really count. Georgia was only favored by 1.5 and the Billikens were once the owners of a 24-1 record. They probably shouldn’t have been a nine seed to begin with.

Admittedly, the chalky finishes can lead to a little case of site envy. Oh, for example, to be in Greenville, where No. 1 Duke not only sweated out its game with 16-seed Siena, but North Carolina blew a 19-point lead to lose to VCU. Or in Portland, where High Point’s Chase Johnston scored his first two- pointer (yes, two!) of the season on a leak out fast break layup that led to an upset of Wisconsin.

But the first day of the NCAA Tournament is about the First Day of the NCAA Tournament. The basketball bacchanal is the thing – swapping pep bands in end zone pits and dancing mascots and eight teams taking one court chasing after the same singular prize.

In a season dominated by conversations about all that is broken in college basketball and college athletics, the tournament reared itself to remind everyone what is right.

It is two random fans on the border of Canada wearing Kentucky jerseys while the Wildcats prep to play in St. Louis and some spindly shirtless kid winning the flex cam contest by dropping for like 20 pushups in the middle of an aisle.

It is a live look in at the VCU-North Carolina game – while Howard and Michigan are still playing – that has fans cheering as the Rams go ahead and booing when video folks have the audacity to split the screen between the Greenville first rounder and the game happening right in front of them.

It is South Florida trailing by 23 and then turning on a press that turned Louisville into a 23-turnover debacle. And it is a humbled USF head coach, Bryan Hodgson, tapping his chest and mouthing thank you to the fans who saluted him as he walked by after doing a postgame radio show.

It is Louisville winning its first NCAA Tournament game since 2017, a span of 3,283 days that included five different coaches, two FBI investigations and an NCAA probe.

It is an NCAA Tournament Selection Committee having the good humor to stuff two rivals and their fan bases into the relatively tight confines of a small American city and, even better, into an arena where the locker rooms have less space between them than a department store fitting room.

Michigan and Michigan State have been assigned to their respective NCAA bracket corners – the Wolverines to the Midwest, the Spartans to the East – but they’re still sharing the same oxygen for the weekend. During a timeout dance off during the Spartans’ game, the big screen caught one kid in a Michigan jersey dancing. He was lustily booed, and also maybe eight.

In a turnabout-is-fair-play moment, a Sparty fan showed during a break of the Wolverines’ game was treated with equal disdain.

So, Michigan State closed out the afternoon session with a 92-67 pasting of North Dakota State, skipping up the exit ramp to their locker room – first door on the left – just as the Wolverines exited next door to stretch in a small holding area.

In the meantime, Howard, the Wolverines’ first-round opponent, headed to the court for some pre-game stretching, setting up directly in front of what had been Michigan State’s bench. Most of the Spartans’ faithful had yet to exit and greeted the Bison as if they were their new favorite team: “Let’s goooooo.’’ Because, of course, for the next 40 minutes they were.

It is aforementioned Howard, a 16-seed, keeping it inexplicably interesting against a 1-seeded Michigan that had both a laughable size and budget advantage. Howard, per the Department of Education Gender Equity in Athletics numbers, spends about $20,000 per basketball player (not including NIL), shot 60% from the arc and trailed by just four against the Wolverines, who spend $162,000 (NIL DEFINITELY not included).

Eventually gravity won. Michigan remembered it was a lot bigger, better and richer, and that was that.

It is Robbie Avila AKA Cream Abdul Jabbar, AKA Milk Chamberlain, AKA Slu Alcindor, AKA Larry Nerd, finally getting his NCAA Tournament moment. The player who couldn’t quite get Indiana State to the ball earned a ticket after he followed his coach to Saint Louis.

The rec-spec wearing Avila has added a brace to his ensemble. It wraps up his right foot, just below the leg sleeve, to aid him as he tries to play through a plantar fascia injury. After he hit a 3 in the second, the very loud and proud St. Louis fan section started chanting, “Rob-bie, Rob-bie.”

Clearly slowed by the injury, Avila still managed 12 points, five rebounds and five assists as Saint Louis routed Georgia, 102-77.

Finally, and most epically, it is a Michigan State cheerleader who dyed his head orange, added well-placed stripes and turned his dome into a basketball.

It is March. It is Madness.

Gloriously, it’s just getting started.