After three days of seeding arguments, complaints about the NCAA and general grumbling about the state of college basketball, it turns out the folks who sequestered themselves in a hotel for a weekend actually knew what they were talking about. The first day of play ended with two lower seeds advancing - a nine and an eleven with a lottery pick - and few close games. No one's tossing their bracket in frustration, and everything's going as planned. Wake me for the weekend.

As for the upset that almost was though, I'll say this. There's nothing like being in a bar that suddenly, spontaneously becomes fervent Belmont fans with 11 minutes to play. Duke's propensity for the occasional cold outside shooting struck again, and the not-those-Bruins had the chance to break away at the end; if only they'd remembered they had Duke outsized and continued to pound it inside. Instead Belmont, who had made only two threes in the second half to that point, kept launching ill-advised shots, only to lose the game on a horrible inbounds play that's going to haunt some players for awhile.

ACC implications aside, it would have been great to see them pull it off.