Updating my earlier college basketball post… Villanova beat Bucknell rather easily, 79-60. As it turns out, the big upsets of the evening were in the Midwest: Indiana State over Indiana and Northern Iowa over Iowa.

Congrats to the winners… and also, major kudos to all three ranked teams for being willing to play their mid-major opponents on the road. It’s nice to see big-name programs willing to do that.

This reminds me of last week’s Seth Davis column, which I’ve been meaning to link to. Davis argues that the “mid-majors” are for real, and they’re here to stay:

Take a look around the country. Nevada is ranked No. 20 in this week’s AP poll. Bucknell, Northern Iowa and Hawaii are in the top tier of “others receiving votes.” Old Dominion, Creighton, Ohio U. and Utah State can play with anyone. And, lest we forget, Gonzaga, which is currently ranked sixth and looking like a Final Four team, plays not in a power league but in the West Coast Conference.

What does all this mean? I believe it means we are in a genuine Golden Age for mid-major schools. This is not a one-year phenomenon. It is a fundamental change in the national hoops landscape that has been a decade in the making — most notably since the NCAA reduced the scholarship limit per team from 15 in 1992 to 13 in 1994. “I’ve never seen anything quite like this. I’m telling you, anybody can beat anybody,” Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim says. “I guarantee you we didn’t play that badly against Bucknell. The so-called mid-majors have moved up and the top teams have dropped quite a bit. These [mid-major] teams are pretty good now, and there’s not just a few of them. There’s a bunch.”

Read the whole thing.

In other hoops news, #14 Michigan State beat #6 Boston College in a game that MSU grad Brian Foster called “a classic in the making.” It was BC’s first loss of the season… but somehow, “Six [clap clap] and one [clap clap]” doesn’t have quite the same ring as “Twenty [clap clap] and one [clap clap].” :)