NCAA Tournament Horizon League

In her last twirl across the floor, Cinderella wears a Viking helmet.

And, judging by the massive mascot painted at the center of Cleveland State's home court, it's a piece of hatwear that would dwarf even Barry Bonds' sombrero.

Take that as a hint. There's nothing petite about this team.

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Cleveland State did it again.

So too did Wake Forest.

Twenty-three years after Cleveland State shocked Indiana in the 1986 NCAA tournament, the 13th-seeded Vikings shock the No. 4 Demon Deacons 84-69 in a game that rarely seemed close.

For Wake Forest, which earned the nation's No. 1 ranking for just the second time in school history this year, it was painfully familiar of their first year with the No. 1 ranking. That, too, ended in a shocking loss on the first weekend.

A major topic of discussion this past week was how mistreated the mid-majors have been in recent years by the NCAA tournament selection committee. Butler is definitely one of the best teams in the nation not from the so-called BCS conferences. The Bulldogs were slotted against LSU, a team from the most maligned BCS conference, the SEC.

Not only did Butler lose to LSU in the first round of the tournament on Thursday, but they came out completely flat and seemed noticeably overmatched in the first five minutes. Sure, things settled down and Butler was in the game to the end, but this game did nothing but reinforce the supposed under-representation of the mid-majors when it comes to at-large berths.

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Among the big story lines from Sunday's filling out of the NCAA basketball tournament field, discussions of conferences who are "overrated" and "underrated" dominated the discussion. Specifically, fans of so-called mid-major teams cried foul, and the masses proclaimed the selection committee was biased in favor of the Big Ten and Pac-10 conferences.

The Louisville Cardinals weren't thought to be in line for a No. 1 seed a week ago, but the ball bounced their way -- so much so that they ended up as the top seed in the entire tournament. Their reward is what appears to be a relatively weak bracket. Michigan State is arguably the worst two-seed in the eyes of the public, for example. The bracket definitely has an up-tempo feel to it, so expect to see the points pile up, especially in the early rounds.

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