Chalk ruled day one of the tourney with one big upset as 12-seed Murray State dominated Marquette en route to a 83-64 win. The Racers were led by phenom and soon-to-be-NBA star Ja Morant who recorded the first triple double in the tournament since 2012 with a 17 point, 16 assist and 10 rebound performance. He was simply spectacular.

Day one also saw two minor upsets with two 10-seeds advancing. Florida held off a late charge from Nevada while Minnesota controlled their game against Louisville as both teams advanced to Saturday.

Day one also had a couple of near upsets. SEC tournament champion and 5-seed Auburn escaped with a 78-77 win over 12-seed New Mexico State in a “hold my beer” on how to lose a game.

6-seed Maryland literally stole away the game against 11-seed Belmont when this happened.

As for our pool, we have 147 submitted brackets. An increase of 23 brackets over last year. Awesome! Welcome and thank you to all of the new participants. As always I will announce the payout once I have verified payment for each bracket. Payment deadline is next Wednesday.

Here’s the link for the standings after day one. Alex Wimmers, Carol Smith and your truly are currently tied atop. (I also have two brackets at the bottom too.)

Standings

Also here’s the list of selected champions. Duke is the over whelming top choice. You can find this data on the PickHoops site under the Stats menu.

Pick Counts by Game

I’m looking forward to a fun day two. Good luck to everyone.