After tearing up millions of brackets on Thursday and Friday, underdogs in this year’s N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament flooded the weekend. They settled into hotel rooms in regional sites where earlier checkouts had been expected. They slept off the excitement of dizzying upset wins.
But the brutal reality of the tournament is that the underdogs did not have much time to celebrate. There were only 32 teams left Saturday, and the favorites in action among them largely managed to maintain their grip on the tournament.
That is not to say it was easy. In the afternoon, two inspirational dark horses (Wichita State and Yale) faced powerhouses of the Atlantic Coast Conference (Miami and Duke), and both games followed the same pattern: The favorites built commanding leads, only to see their upstart opponents chip away at those leads in the second half.