CHESTNUT HILL, Mass -- The first round of any college basketball tournament feels more like a group stage celebratory feel than its later rounds. The overarching storylines backdrop the games against the biggest and best teams available for the second or third day, and it's not until the arrival of those "better teams" that the seriousness melts away the happy-go-lucky environment of those first days.
Few teams advance to deeper days after playing in a first round, so the first day angles its eyes towards the second round entry of higher seeds likely to play in a quarterfinal or semifinal game.