Robert Deutsch/USA Today Sports, via Reuters
The scares came one after another on Thursday, paroxysms of bracket-busting possibility that stimulated hopes of buzzer-beating upsets and overtime delights, those traditional trappings of March. The scares came early and late, they hovered and they lingered, and then, alas, they faded.
Instead of a mayhem-packed opening to the N.C.A.A. tournament, what unfolded across the four venues was not quite boring but rather anticlimax. For all of the close games and potential for chaos, only two lower-seeded teams won, and one — 12th-seeded Murray State, which throttled No. 5 Marquette by 83-64 — was about as fashionable as an upset pick as a Burberry raincoat.