Mike DeCourcy

NEW ORLEANS - The Kentucky cheerleaders were pleading. The UK band was rocking. And their school's basketball team wasn't scheduled to play its NCAA tournament second-round game for another half-hour.

Instead, they were gathered around a television in the press room at the New Orleans Arena cheering for Northern Iowa to take out the tournament's overall No. 1 seed, Kansas. And they got their wish: UNI 69, KU 67.

What already had been a wild tournament — with No. 2 seed Villanova and No. 3 seed New Mexico eliminated Saturday to join No. 3 Georgetown and No. 4 Vanderbilt in the offseason — was thrown into total chaos.

Though shoved into a loaded bracket by the selection committee, the Jayhawks were such a talented, complete, accomplished team they still were considered the favorite. Their demise left us with many questions to consider:

• Who benefits most by KU's departure? Obviously, the Kentucky cheerleaders believe it's their Wildcats. And they may be right, but it can't pay off for them for a long time; they couldn't have met until the final. In the short term, it helps Sunday's Michigan State-Maryland winner, and it really is a lift for Midwest No. 2 seed Ohio State and its star, Sporting News Player of the Year Evan Turner.
• Where does this rank in the history of tournament upsets? Not as high as you might think. It isn't even the biggest of the 14 second-round upsets that have taken out No. 1 seeds. That would have been Boston College beating North Carolina's loaded 1994 team — defending champions with Rasheed Wallace and Jerry Stackhouse added to the mix. In beating the Jayhawks, UNI improved to 30-4. You don't win that many games at the Missouri Valley level without being a fantastic team.
• What does this say about No. 9 seed Northern Iowa? It says, yet again, the committee must pay greater attention to the merits of elite mid-major teams when seeding the field. Its members gave Butler a No. 5, which was good, but UNI had shown its worth by dominating the Valley and easily handling Siena and Old Dominion. UNI is one of the tightest defensive teams in college basketball.

Don't try to sell that David vs. Goliath stuff to the Panthers.

"That's definitely not the way we look at it at all, I guess," senior forward Adam Koch said. "We feel like we're a good team. We can play with anybody. So, you know, we just knew that they were a tough team and we're going to have to play really well today and play a good game. We never doubted we could play with them at all."

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