What's your favorite NCAA tournament cliché?
Guards win in the tournament? Maybe you prefer the fairy tale motif: Cinderellas, slippers, dancing and so on. Perhaps your favorite March tradition is the issuing of stern warnings to friends, or colleagues, or no one in particular, that they should never, ever count out Tom Izzo.
Yes, the NCAA tournament is always rife with cliché, and clichés always have roots in truth. But they rarely bat 1,000. Guards don't always win in the tournament. The Spartans don't always go to the Final Four. Occasionally, Cinderella forgets her invitation.
Only one March axiom can lay claim to universal application. Only one cliché has a perfect record:
You never know what you're going to get.
Case in point? The first Friday of the 2015 NCAA tournament -- a day so unsurprising, so madness-free, it ended up surprising us after all.
Get this: Sixteen games were played Friday. In the first 15, not a single underdog won. And we're not just talking about actual underdogs -- those lovable long-shots whose wins bust your bracket and cement unforgettable moments, those chaos-makers on whom this first weekend annually thrives. They were nowhere to be found on Friday. But hey: Neither were the No. 9 seeds, facing those evenly matched No. 8s. Neither were the No. 10s, playing ostensibly vulnerable No. 7s. Neither were those old, reliable No. 12s, who, in addition to two losses Thursday, cemented the end of the 12-line's eight-year streak of at least one win over No. 5.
On Friday, it took until after 1 a.m. ET, in the final game of the day, to avoid becoming the first round of 64 day in NCAA tournament history to feature not a single seed-line upset. It was only the second time ever that 15 out of the 16 higher seeds won (2000).
How's that for a surprise?
Friday felt even more unlikely in the wake of the Thursday that preceded it. The 2015 tourney's opening day set a much more appealing record: It was the first time any day in tournament history featured five games decided by just one point. Eleven games were decided by fewer than 10 points, which tied an historic high; nine games were decided by five or fewer points, another record-tying glut. On Thursday night, the whole field -- including Dayton's First Four win Wednesday -- had already produced six one-point games, just one shy of the overall bracket record.
Thursday was a complete freak show. It began with two No. 3 seeds from the strongest conference in the country (the Big 12) losing in massively unlikely fashion (just after a third, Notre Dame, barely survived Northeastern). It just kept going from there, one close game after another, one big shot after another, winding through UCLA's bonkers goaltended game-winner over SMU and Ohio State's overtime win over VCU and North Carolina's two-point win over Harvard and LSU's hysterical collapse to NC State and Troy Caupain's endlessly spinning sports-movie-cliché of a game-tying layup in Cincinnati's eventual one-point win over Purdue. It was joyous and exhausting. It was everything the NCAA tournament should be. And it seemed to promise more.
And then came Friday. Kansas kicked things off with an easy win over New Mexico State. Save a couple of shaky late mistakes, Michigan State was businesslike in a 70-63 win against Georgia. Virginia was tested deep into the second half, but eventually overwhelmed Belmont 79-67. Oregon handled Oklahoma State. Oklahoma handled Albany. Iowa clobbered Davidson -- one of the best shooting teams in the country suddenly gone cold -- by 31.
There were a few close games, of course; there always are. Buffalo made West Virginia sweat in the second half of a game the Mountaineers led until the 2:14 mark, when the Bulls tied it at 62, just before Tarik Phillips made a game-clinching 3 with 29 seconds to play. Tenth-seeded Indiana and its up-tempo offense came out hot, attacking an underseeded, savvy Wichita State, but the water in Omaha eventually found its level. Louisville needed final-minute scrambles to overcome UC Irvine and fan-favorite 7-foot-6 center Mamadou Ndiaye, but don't expect to see that 57-55 grind -- or its underwhelming ending -- on too many instant classic highlight reels. (Rick Pitino's postgame performance, wherein he said his team looked like "midgets" next to Ndiaye, was the most classic portion of the proceedings.)
Oh, and Maryland needed a big defensive stop (and some questionable late-game execution by the Crusaders) to edge Valparaiso. Given Maryland's m.o., though -- the Terps entered the tournament 11-1 in games decided by six points or fewer -- it would have been more surprising to see Mark Turgeon's team blow the 13 seed away.
You kept waiting for something to happen. Something crazy. Something controversial. OK, OK, you can't get a game-winning goaltend every day. But come on, Friday: Give us something.
It never came. The day just plodded along, oblivious to the expectations of its viewers, apparently determined to correct the all-out craziness of the day that preceded it. Sixteen games. Fourteen hours. And, but for Dayton -- which went to the Elite Eight last season, was underseeded at No. 11 this week, and played in Columbus on Friday night -- pure anticlimax.
Instead, we turn our lowly eyes to Saturday. That's when the 16 teams that survived Thursday take the floor again, when the products of all that first day wildness will meet. The day begins with the best representation, when No. 11 UCLA plays No. 14 UAB at 12:10 p.m. ET. Suddenly famous coach Ron Hunter, the star of the tournament thus far, will see if he and son R.J. Hunter can cook up a Sweet 16 berth vs. No. 6 Xavier. The rest of the slate -- including UNC-Arkansas, Utah-Georgetown, Butler-Notre Dame, and Ohio State star D'Angelo Russell's meeting with a dominant Arizona defense -- is more conventional. But it's also tantalizing all the same.
Whatever happens, it has to be more surprising than the day that came before. Thursday set a tangible new standard for out-and-out craziness. Friday may have been the least astonishing opening-round day in the history of the NCAA tournament. It was shocking in its utter lack of shock.
In the end, the most enduring tournament cliché of them all held true yet again: In March, you never know what to expect. Especially the expected.