The round of 32 sits in this weird spot in March Madness. There's a chaos that comes with the first round, and a general glee at watching teams that you didn't even know existed take on the blue bloods of college basketball. And of course the Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight, Final Four, and so on are all very serious business and help make sense of the national championship picture.
But the round of 32, which doesn't even have a cool name, just kind of sits there at the end of the first weekend of action. It's anxiety embodied in the form of 16 make-or-break games that showcase some teams starting their drive for glory and others that accidentally caught to bumper of the car they were chasing and now don't know what to do with it.