No one ever likes to get sick. But when the doctor's orders for a speedy recovery include sitting around and watching lots of TV, as mine did this past weekend, and the NCAA tournament just happens to fall over that same period, let's just say you do feel better a lot quicker. Not everything about the weekend was good, however. Here's a look at the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly from the first week of the NCAA tournament.

Although the tournament officially started Thursday, the madness associated with the annual bash really didn't start until Saturday. With the TV guide showing "College Basketball 12 p.m.-9 p.m." I hunkered down with brackets, pizza and a couple of boxes of Thin Mints Girl Scout cookies to take it all in.

Up to that point, the only real exciting game of the tournament — aside from University of Wisconsin's heart attack of a game against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, which was exciting in a way few around here wanted — was Virginia Commonwealth's upset of Duke. Even that game was not much of a shocker, given many national pundits had tabbed that as a likely first-round upset.

But then Saturday came.

Kicking off and foreshadowing what would become an absolutely crazy day of hoops, in-state rivals Xavier and Ohio State squared off. The matchup had subplots galore, aside from the Marquette-Wisconsin-type public-private hatred that comes when two schools are only 100 miles apart; the Musketeers had been saying all year long that they wanted a shot at the highly touted Buckeyes. On top of that, Ohio State coach Thad Matta (who, incidentally, does not rank among the favorite coaches of Milwaukee's Best) has been the sworn enemy of Xavier basketball ever since he left the school to go to Columbus three years ago, despite pledging his allegiance to Xavier only days before taking the Ohio State job.

It seemed to be one of those games where the lead-up and hype would be impossible to live up to.

It did.

After a mad Ohio State comeback, the game culminated with the following sequence:

Ohio State's Jamar Butler missing a 3-pointer that would have given OSU the lead, followed by Greg Oden fouling out after mistaking Justin Cage for a blocking sled and knocking him into next week, somehow avoiding what would have been a crippling intentional foul, followed by me calling a friend to say I wanted Cage to miss one just so I could hear Gus Johnson calling the final seconds with Ohio State trying to tie, followed by Cage missing, Ron Lewis coming down and drilling a 30-footer for the tie and Johnson stringing together a sentence of untranslatable words in excitement.

All told, of Saturday's eight games, there were four total overtimes played, five games were decided by five points or fewer, and not one game was a certifiable bummer. It was one of the best days of college basketball in recent memory. Too bad you could only watch one game at a time…

Oh, wait.

Also Good: CBS Sportsline

For the second straight year, CBS partnered with the NCAA to stream broadcasts of every tournament game over the web. It was all completely free and prompted me to rent a laptop from the UW Infolabs so we could have three games going at once (one on the TV, one on the rented laptop and another on my roommate's laptop). The webcasts are delayed by about a minute, so to avoid seeing the score updates on the top of the TV screen we just put some black electricians tape on the screen. Not sure if it's good for the TV or not, but it was definitely good for my viewing enjoyment.
The Bad, Part I: James Brown

While there are lots of things in this world to feel good about, this is not one of them. Apparently CBS thought it was a good idea to let everyone's favorite studio host call tournament games. Aside from the fact that Brown brought little excitement and lots of hesitancy to the games he called, I can deal with CBS' decision allowing him to call some first round games. What I have a hard time coming to terms with is the fact that Brown will be calling regional semifinal and final games, bumping Johnson out of the rotation.

For anyone who watched games both called this past week , the better announcer was obviously Johnson. Johnson has the longer list of past play-by-play credentials and has also been doing play-by-play for the past 11 years, whereas Brown hasn't done any play-by-play since the very early nineties.

Worse than that, an entire generation of fans, myself included, know Brown best for his work as Fox's studio host for the NFL pregame show. Through no fault of his own, whenever I hear Brown's voice I am expecting him to send it to Terry Bradshaw, Frank Caliendo or Jillian Barberie instead of setting up his color analyst to dissect a play.

Plus, getting back to the Ohio State game, I have watched the YouTube clip of the final seconds no fewer than six times and still can't figure out what Johnson was trying to say after the shot went in. It's the same "Whoaapoaiehahaha!" sound you probably made with all your friends watching the game, and that's what makes a Johnson game such a great event to watch: It's like a talented member of your friend base is calling the game, not some stiff dude.

The Bad, Part II: No Cinderellas

All season long, especially in the lead-up to the tournament, analysts and prognosticators everywhere were always looking for the "next" George Mason — a relatively unknown mid-major team that would make a deep run in the tournament. In fact, as much as it may have been overdone at points, the talk underscored a facet of March many college basketball fans had come to take for granted: A double-digit seeded team or two would shock a couple big-time programs in the first weekend and endear themselves to the nation as Cinderella teams.

This year, for the first time since 1995, no double-digit princesses are dancing a second weekend. While this has hurt the brackets of those diehards who know their historical trends, I find it interesting that no one really, to this point, has a good explanation as to why this happened this year.

I think I have solved the riddle though. Remember back to the fairy tale that Cinderella's spell ran out at midnight, when she would turn back into the commoner she was. Now, just this year the federal government moved the day we changed our clocks to earlier than it had been in the past. Therefore midnight is today, and was last week, one hour earlier than last year at the same time.

One hour earlier, one round earlier, same difference.

When you think of it that way, the tournament clock for those teams had already struck midnight by the time they showed up to play.

It might not be a perfect explanation, but it's easier to reason with than RPI calculations.

The U.G.L.Y.: Wisconsin Badgers

The Badgers had no alibi for their shaky showing over the weekend. They came out flat in both games and struggled to find any semblance of the free-flowing offense that characterized this team during their long winning streak. Except for the second half of the TAMU-CC game and spurts in the UNLV game, UW looked like the inferior team in each game.

Wisconsin's — and the Big Ten's in general — struggles in the early stage s of the tournament only proved to those doubters of the Big Ten that conference teams were not up to par with those around the country.

If you want to look for one bright spot in an otherwise dismal picture, Jason Bohannon seemed to step up his game to the moment and will be someone who, come this time next year, could find himself as part of the Good following the first weekend of tournament action.

Ben is a sophomore majoring in political science. Miffed that Gus Johnson won't get to yell "Last chance to dance!" during an Elite 8 game? Email him at [email protected].