Amidst wails of lamentation, one of the last great arenas of the underdog died last year: the antiquated format of the Indiana high school basketball tournament, rendered famous by the movie Hoosiers. No longer can a small, scrappy school feel the joy of slaying a larger interscholastic Goliath.

Fortunately for Hollywood, hopeless romantics, and all the rest of us, the Hoosier tradition survives gloriously in the NCAA Tournament, in which the most relevant questions are not whether David will slay Goliath, but where and how often.

If Gwyneth Paltrow might have provided the inspiration for Juliet, it’s not implausible to suggest that the NCAAs could have given the Bard the idea for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. During the first weekend, the tournament is a Shakespearean comedy: two acts of delightful confusion and mischief, unthinkable pairings, and insults to rank and dignity.

That’s what makes the tournament’s first four days the most exciting annual event in sports. The regional finals offer compelling stories. The Final Four features exciting drama and marvelous competition. But most of the madness in March bubbles up during the first two rounds.

Maybe it’s our opposition to monarchism at work, but we root for the underdogs. Regardless of the havoc they will wreak on your office pool picks, you can’t help but pull for underdogs like Detroit and Gonzaga and Weber State. When an upset suddenly looms as a possibility, it’s hard to avoid getting caught up in the delirium of the moment.

Every year, you can count on lower seeds to win half a dozen first-round games. A couple of teams seeded lower than 12th usually engineer upsets, and one almost always advances to the Sweet 16.

This year, the little dogs have ruled. Utter craziness has reigned in basketball’s forest of Arden, just as we like it.

In first-round match-ups, lower-seeded teams won 12 of 32 games. The Sweet Sixteen features no less than five teams seeded 10th or lower.

All but one of the No. 2 seeds are gone already. Two No. 3s were booted. Likewise with three No. 4 seeds. What we’re left with is an odd assemblage of high rollers and teams that weren’t supposed to be here.

For example, most of the press oracles had consigned Purdue—losers of five out of its final six regular-season games—to the NIT. Almost overnight, the underdog Boilermakers became Rottweilers—spurred into a quest for respect, perhaps, by coach Gene Keady, the man who is to scowls what Einstein was to physics.

Or consider the case of 13-seed Oklahoma, which slid in with the tournament’s final at-large berth and was expected to leave quietly. But the Sooners stunned sleepy Arizona (which tends not to arrive until the second round), then dope-slapped UNC-Charlotte by 13.

That’s been typical of this year’s madness. The dogs aren’t just squeaking by; they’re rolling the high seeds like the town drunk. Just ask Stanford, which was zigged by the Zags of Gonzaga—a team so obscure that most fans couldn’t even name its home state (Washington).

Then there’s Southwest Missouri State, perhaps the most destructive 12th seed in history. First, the Bears limited Wisconsin to the fewest points (32) scored by any tournament team in 50 years. Then, for an encore, they scoured Tennessee so thoroughly that they could have obliterated Tony Harris’ “FOXY” tattoo in the process.

This year, the best peformances have come from underdogs, too—not the marquee players whose big programs draw the most notoriety. Were the balloting held today, the tourney’s MVP doubtless would be Wally “World” Szczerbiak of Miami (Ohio), who scored 43 of his team’s 58 points against Washington, then added 25 more on just 11 shots in a solid win over Utah.

Eliciting even more oohs and ahhs was Harold “The Show” Arceneaux, who lived up to his nickname in two games for Weber State. The all-tournament squad would also have to find room for Oklahoma’s Eduardo Najera, who shot down Arizona and then recorded 20 points and 15 rebounds on Sunday.

The tournament’s other big winner is Southwest Missouri State’s Steve Alford. In just two games, Alford may have transformed himself from a coaching prodigy into the object of a bidding frenzy by athletic directors with vacancies to fill. (If he’s hired at Iowa, as many observers anticipate, his contract may turn out to be $100,000 fatter than it would have been before last weekend’s manic doings.)

Eventually, the women’s tournament will grow up and become fevered by the same madness that infects the men. For financial reasons, the NCAA confines the first two rounds of the women’s brackets to the home courts of each region’s top two seeds, placing a formidable hurdle squarely in the path of the underdogs.

In 32 first-round women’s games, only five lower seeds prevailed—none lower than an 11. More critically, the format gave the top seeds a powerful advantage in the second round, when they faced opponents more capable of beating them. In the Mideast, for example, top-seeded Connecticut probably would not have survived Xavier, a pesky eighth-seed, without the exhortations of its home crowd. Take away their home-court advantage, and second-seeded Old Dominion and Colorado State might have become upset victims, too.

But now is no time for carping, nor for worrying about how badly Alford’s team will be crushed by mighty Duke. It’s enough simply to savor the madness of the moment.

Soon enough, order will prevail. When the sun comes up again, the Final Four will be populated with the usual overdogs.

After last weekend, we’re mostly done with the impossible upsets, the stuff that dreams are made on. Until next March, our revels are ended. Soon, the actors will melt into air, into thin air, and their little life will be rounded with a sleep.

How It Looks From The La-Z-Boy

(Slightly revised, and with apologies to Purdue, Ohio State, and Oklahoma)

South Regional: Sweet 16: Auburn over Ohio State; Maryland over St. John’s. Regional Final: Maryland over Auburn.

West Regional: Sweet 16: Connecticut over Iowa; Gonzaga over Florida.

Regional Final: Connecticut over Gonzaga.

East Regional: Sweet 16: Duke over Southwest Missouri State;

Temple over Purdue.

Regional Final: Duke over Temple.

Midwest Regional: Sweet 16:

Michigan State over Oklahoma; Kentucky over Miami (Ohio).

Regional Final: Kentucky over

Michigan State.

Final Four: Maryland over\Connecticut; Duke over Kentucky.

Championship: Duke over Maryland.

Women’s NCAA Tournament

East Regional: Sweet 16: Tennessee over Virginia Tech; Duke over

Old Dominion.

Regional Final: Tennessee over Duke.

Midwest Regional: Sweet 16:

Purdue over North Carolina; Texas Tech over Rutgers.

Regional Final: Texas Tech over Purdue.

Mideast Regional : Sweet 16: Connecticut over Iowa State; Georgia over Clemson.

Regional Final: Connecticut over Georgia.

West Regional: Sweet 16: Louisiana Tech over LSU; UCLA over Colorado State.

Regional Final: Louisiana Tech over UCLA.

Final Four: Tennessee over Connecticut; Louisiana Tech over Texas Tech.

Championship: Tennessee over Louisiana Tech.