Ruh-roh

This is why we watch. This is why we pile into places with wall-to-wall TVs on a weekday afternoon, why the boss thinks we're just out on a sales call (Shhh!), why the first two days of the NCAA Tournament are an unofficial national holiday, and the best two days.

We watch because UMBC (which stands for University of Maryland-Baltimore County) 74, Virginia 54.

We watch because a 16 seed beat a 1 seed -- and not just a 1 seed, but the overall 1 seed -- for the first time in 136 tries.

We watch because that was history happening right in front of us Friday night, and the upset of all upsets. And upsets are why we watch.

Does anyone care when Duke crushes Iona? Or when North Carolina rolls over Lipscomb?

No. No one watches these games for that.

We watch them to see Duke get taken down by Mercer, or Kansas get taken down by Bucknell. We watch,  as happened yesterday, to see Wichita State get taken down by Marshall, and Michigan State get pushed to the wall by (again!) those feisty Bison from Bucknell.

We live for the upsets. We fill out our brackets, and then, when some mind-boggling upset turns our brackets into cinders, we secretly love it. We moan and groan, but deep down inside we love it.

Which brings us back to UMBC over Virginia, the splendidly nicknamed Retrievers over the Cavaliers, the "Ruh-roh" moment of the tournament for all the bracketologists. Many, many people, including people who should have known better, had Virginia in the Final Four. Some of them had the Cavaliers in the title game. A whole lot of them had Virginia winning it all -- even though, as the Blob pointed out the other day, Virginia almost always craps out in Da Tournament, so proceed with caution.

In any event, those people's brackets are ash now. And how great is that?

After all, in an event driven by the thrill of the upset, this was the thrill-iest upset of them all. It even had a certain symmetry to it; Virginia is now on the losing end of the two greatest upsets in college basketball history.

The first happened in 1982, when an NAIA school (Chaminade) beat Ralph Sampson and No. 1 Virginia 77-72 in the Maui Classic. The second, of course, was last night, when a hyphen school that two months ago lost by 44 to Albany beat the No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament by 20.

Shoot. A week ago, UMBC needed a last-second 3-pointer to knock off Vermont in its conference championship game. It was the first time the Retrievers had beaten Vermont in their last 23 meetings.

And now they whip Virginia right out of the box?

In the prison of the moment, some folks were comparing it to the Miracle on Ice, but it's hardly that. UMBC would have to have beaten the Golden State Warriors for a proper analogy to the Miracle. Frankly, I'm not even sure it's a more mind-blowing upset than Chaminade over Virginia, except of course in the circumstance.

 As lowly as UMBC is, after all, it's still an NCAA Division I school. Chaminade was an NAIA school. Think St. Francis or Indiana Tech taking down Kentucky or Duke and you're on the right track.

In any case, it's the biggest upset in this particular tournament's history. And it's what we came for. And now it's on to the weekend, where most of the provincial interest will be in 10-seed Butler taking on 2-seed Purdue tomorrow.

Purdue, which, just as Virginia lost its sixth man before Da Tournament, has lost the man through whom its offense runs, Isaac Haas.

Butler, which annihilated 7-seed Arkansas in its first-round game, and which lost by 15 to Purdue back in  December.

Ruh-roh.