This was the payoff. This was the reward waiting at the end of the murkiest college basketball season in recent memory, one in which the No. 1 ranking changed hands six times, where the consensus was that there were no great teams, and where even one of the consensus title contenders turned out to be far more vulnerable than anyone realized.
After four-and-a-half months that yielded little clarity, 68 teams were thrown into a single-elimination bracket, and it took just two days for it to devolve into total madness. A tournament-record 10 double-digit seeds won first-round games, and Friday’s victors included teams seeded Nos.