What Went Down In The First Round Of The NCAA Tournament

If you’re still looking for some last minute help filling out that bracket and/or just don’t feel right sending four top seeds to the Final Four, here’s some info on potential surprise Final Four teams. Jump on the Auburn bandwagon before everyone else!

No doubt, it’ll be the Ja Morant-Markus Howard show. But the Racers’ Shaq Buchanan will be critical. He’s the OVC defensive player of the year and will likely draw the assignment of keeping Howard in check. Morant is the future lottery pick, but Buchanan is a big reason why the Racers have their best defense in years and are in the tournament.

As for Murray State’s opponent, Marquette destroyed St. John’s (which was KO’ed from this tournament last night by Bobby Hurley’s ASU Sun Devils) in its first Big East tournament game but was otherwise playing awful before that — losing to Georgetown, Creighton, Nova and Seton Hall to end the regular season. The Golden Eagles also have a 5-foot-something scoring machine of their own in Markus Howard. Watching him face off with Ja Morant is going to be fun.