The Smaller Ten

 Take heart, you chastened Big Ten people. At least you're not Kansas.

Beaten out of sight by a football school. Now there's what you want on your tombstone.

But USC couldn't miss and they sent the Jayhawks home last night, and by 33 points. It was Kansas' worst NCAA Tournament defeat ever, and it took a bit of the spotlight off the Smaller Ten's awful weekend.

So there's that, Smaller Ten. And you've got Michigan, which advanced to the Sweet Sixteen by asserting itself in the last 10 minutes and brushing aside LSU.

Other than that ... well, the Smaller Ten did Smaller Ten things in the Madness, only more egregiously than usual. Nine conference teams Marched into the Madness; only one survived the first weekend.

Two of them (Ohio State and Iowa) were 2-seeds. One (Purdue) was a 4-seed. One (Michigan State, usually all flavors of dangerous in March) didn't even get out of the play-in round.

So the Smaller Ten is 1-for-9 in the Sweet Sixteen, and the allegedly much smaller Pac-12 is 4-for-5. It figures.

It figures, because no one would have picked this Sweet Sixteen, unless you filled out your bracket in the throes of an acid flashback. Half the 2-seeds are missing. Three of the four 3-and-4-seeds are gone. A quarter of the 16 remaining teams are 11-seeds or higher.

But Michigan is there, and so are two of the other 1-seeds. So the Smaller Ten's got that going for it.

Some people might call that small potatoes. 

But really it's just, you know, Smaller potatoes.