Bracket buzz day one: Ohio State, OU go down, Sparty’s Payne is perfect, and more

Double-digit seeds ignited the round of 64 games Thursday and the real start to the NCAA Tournament.

Dayton and Ohio State played in the day’s first game, and provided the first upset. Buckeyes’ guard Aaron Craft got a decent look at the bucket but his runner was too firm, bounced off the front iron and preserved the No. 11 seed Flyers’ 60-59 triumph over sixth-seeded Ohio State in Buffalo, N.Y.

“I thought it was going in,” Dayton coach Archie Miller said. “I’ve watched those guys win that game 1,000 times.”

But fortune smiled with Miller and the Flyers, who got the game winner from Vee Sanford, on a drive with 3.8 seconds remaining.

One of the last games of the day sent the first Big 12 team packing: Oklahoma.

The No. 5 seed Sooners lost 80-75 in overtime to No. 12 North Dakota State, which escaped regulation on a Lawrence Alexander three-pointer with less than 12 seconds to play.

Colorado must have thought it was in the evening session. The Buffaloes never showed up and got crushed by Pittsburgh 77-48 in Orlando, Fla.

And this was an 8-9 seed game, supposed to be a nail-biter.

Delaware coach Monte Ross said he thought his guys did a decent job on Michigan State’s Adreian Payne in the second half. The problem was, the damage had been done.

Payne scored 41 in the Spartans’ 93-78 victory, the most by a Michigan State player in an NCAA Tournament game.

The Blue Hens kept hacking Payne, and that was a mistake. He buried all 17 free-throw attempts, setting an NCAA Tournament record for most makes without a miss.

Saint Louis pulled off an amazing comeback, making up a 14-point deficit with eight minutes remaining, beating North Carolina State 83-80 in overtime at Orlando, Fla., and gaining a measure of satisfaction for the Atlantic-10 Conference.

After beating the Wolfpack in the Atlantic Coast Conference semifinals, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said he told counterpart Mark Gottfried that he hoped his team got an NCAA Tournament bid and that the ACC deserved more bids than the Atlantic-10.

“I’ll probably get in trouble for saying it,” Krzyzewski said. “The Atlantic-10 is a really good conference. I hear people saying there are six teams in there. I mean, they’re good, but put them in our conference and put them through the meat grinder that our conference has to go through.”

The A-10 and ACC each got six teams in the tournament.

This marks the fourth year of the 68-team field, with four opening round (or play-in) games before the traditional Thursday’s opening. In each of the first three years, a team that has played early won at least one more game.

Tennessee, a No. 11 seed which beat Iowa in overtime on Wednesday, will need to beat sixth-seeded Massachusetts on Friday in a Midwest Region game to keep the streak alive.

This story was originally published March 20, 2014 at 9:40 PM with the headline "Bracket buzz day one: Ohio State, OU go down, Sparty’s Payne is perfect, and more."