It is Monday morning after the first four days of the NCAA tournament; if the Monday following Selection Sunday is the day that the nation’s printers get a bracket-based workout, then today is the day that the nation’s trash baskets are filled with those crumpled remains. I don’t know about you, but two of my Final Four picks - Georgetown and Pittsburgh — failed to get out of the second round, meaning that for the umpteenth year in a row, I can forget about winning the office pool.

Sunday was a day that gave us three double-digit seeds in the Sweet Sixteen, but that result was less exciting than it sounds; with two 12/13 games on the docket, we already knew there’d be at least two Cinderellas still dancing next weekend. Only Davidson’s win over Georgetown proved to be an upset of the first order. That said, it wasn’t like there was no excitement Sunday; the early game (Villanova-Siena) was a dog and the late games were blowouts (Memphis-Mississippi State looked closer at the end than it was), but in the middle, we were treated to four simultaneous barn-burners. First, Miami took Texas down to the wire, and then Butler and Tennessee went to overtime at virtually the same instant that Davidson was taking down Georgetown. CBS cut wildly back and forth for awhile, with Greg Gumbel throwing us viewers first to one game, then the other; eventually, they gave up on the bumpers, and just cut directly from one game to the other like somebody was flipping channels in the studio. Ultimately, we here in the Twin Cities never even saw Western Kentucky and San Diego, even though the Toreros pulled within four with a minute to go before going cold. That’s one heck of an afternoon.

Ultimately, it was a pretty good weekend. There were a few upsets and some memorable buzzer-beaters, there’s still three teams from the bottom half of the bracket left, and all four #1 seeds are still there to be knocked off. Even if you just cheer for the Big Ten teams — as so many people seem to do, despite that they spend the rest of the year rooting for those teams to lose — you’re still doing fine, as both Wisconsin and Michigan State sailed through into the Sweet Sixteen. (That’s one more spot for the supposedly horrid Big Ten than the ACC or SEC got, by the way.)

Next week, there’s a couple of intriguing semifinals on tap (Wisconsin-Davidson and Xavier-West Virginia look to be two of the best), a couple of major upset opportunities (Kansas takes on #12 Villanova and UCLA takes on #12 Western Kentucky). And, best of all, 12 more games. Though my bracket is, and your bracket might be, this tournament isn’t dead and buried yet.

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