LAS VEGAS -- While Thursday's chalk-fest was an ATM for the for March Madness tourists here in town and kept most of America smiling about how clean their brackets looked, Friday busted all of that.
No. 15 seed Norfolk State beat No. 2 Missouri 86-84 as a 21-point underdog. No. 15 seed Lehigh beat No. 2 Duke 75-70 as an 11.5-point 'dog. No. 13 seed Ohio beat No. 4 Michigan 65-60 as a 6-point 'dog. No. 12 seed South Florida beat No. 5 seed Temple 58-44 as a 3.5 point underdog. And there were smaller upsets by Saint Louis, Purdue and Xavier (note: No. 11 NC State was the betting favorite over No. 6 San Diego State).
Actually, underdogs went only 8-7-1 against the spread on Friday, but it's the upsets that resonate in the collective subconscious of college basketball fans and the games that draw the most attention on "SportsCenter."
To make sense of the madness that those upsets left us with, I placed a call late Friday night to Sal Selvaggio of Maddux Sports (madduxsports.com and on Twitter @sportspicks) to help talk me through my handicapping of Sunday's matchups.
"Thursday was filled with terrible matchups and boring games, but today [Friday] was awesome," Selvaggio said. "This is what we want March Madness to be all about, though I actually made more money on Thursday."
Let's take a look at Sunday's games:
Midwest
No. 1 North Carolina Tar Heels versus No. 8 Creighton Bluejays
Spread: North Carolina minus-9