Unlike Tiger Woods Masters odds, where everyone assumes that the world’s No.1 player will come back victorious from a five-month exile, the NCAA Tournament was one of the most wide-open editions of March Madness in recent history.

The top four conferences (Big East, Big 12, Big Ten, ACC) took 26 bids, but nine of those teams were gone after the first round. The top overall seed, Kansas, didn’t even make it out of the first weekend as they were upset by Northern Iowa. By the time we got to Indianapolis, we had just one No.1 seed (Duke), a No.2 seed (West Virginia), and a pair of No.5 seeds (Michigan State and Butler).

The Blue Devils took care of West Virginia, making their first appearance in the Final Four since 1959, but the story of the game was the knee injury suffered by Mountaineers star Da’Sean Butler, who will surely go later in the draft, if at all this year. Butler, whose campus was six miles from the site of the Final Four (the closest proximity in history), held off Michigan State, who was the hometown favorite last year in Detroit, but they were in the Final Four for the sixth time in 12 years, while Butler was here for the first time.

The final game was a classic as Duke won their fourth national title under coach Mike Krzyzewski, but Butler never gave up in this 61-59 game, and Gordon Hayward’s heave from center court would have been the best buzzer-beater in Tournament history, but it just missed. Brackets were a mess by the second weekend, and online sports betting players may have had a bad month, but for excitement, this was the best Tournament in years.