Five things we learned from Thursday's games

	VCU's Eric Maynor sent Duke home when he hit this 15-foot jumper with 1.8 seconds left. Rick Stewart/Getty Images
	SI Writers at the Tournament WINN: Maynor shows he's VCU's strongest link WINN: Terps avoid nightmare, pull out victory DAVIS: VCU not a shock, plus other Day 1 notes WAHL: What we've learned, plus my UNC mishap MANDEL: Duke suffering a rare down cycle DORTCH: Rice, Dudley carry Eagles to win DORTCH: Michigan State suffocates Marquette TAYLOR: Weaver helps WSU to win vs. ORU TAYLOR: IU's White the difference vs. Gonzaga MORRILL: Louisville plays loose, wins big MORRILL: Musketeers top Cougars in nail-biter DOHRMANN: Wolf Pack show they're more than Fazekas DOHRMANN: Purdue's desire pushes it past 'Zona GALLERY: Day One action from the Dance March Madness Archive | Women's Tourney Tourney Home Page | Play our Bracket Challenge

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- So let me tell you how the 'Bag almost became the Enemy of the State in North Carolina:

On Wednesday I came thisclose to sitting on (and breaking) Tyler Hansbrough's new plastic mask.

It was an innocent-enough mistake. I was in the Tar Heels locker room and sat down next to Dewey Burke, one of my better sources on the team and the mop-up-time guy who's now famous for physically preventing Hansbrough from tearing Gerald Henderson's head off after the Bloody Broken Nose episode two weeks ago.

Anyway, little did the 'Bag know that the locker next to Burke's was that of Hansbrough (who was off at the press conference podium), and when I sat down with a thump I'd say I missed crushing the new mask by maybe two inches.

"Coach Williams wouldn't have been happy about that," Burke told me in the understatement of the year.

Before we dive into today's episode of Five Things We Learned, we'll say this about the most publicized mask since the Phantom of the Opera: the new one (designed by the guy who did Rip Hamilton's mask) is a lot better than the old one. For one thing, it actually fits Hansbrough and doesn't stick out from his head, killing his peripheral vision. Second, how incompetent was the guy who designed Hansbrough's first mask that he used at last week's ACC tournament. Whose face was that mask designed for? Shrek's?

O.K., five things we've learned on Thursday:

1. Eric Maynor is one of the best March stories in years. The VCU guard would have gone into the pantheon just for his repeat pickpocket heroics in the last seconds of the Rams' Colonial tournament final win against George Mason. But Maynor somehow went even one better with his 22-point gem in VCU's upset (finally, an upset!) against Duke. Maynor clearly got into the head of Greg Paulus, and his last-second jumper over Jon Scheyer was a thing of beauty. Wonder how former Dukie Jeff Capel must feel right now? It was Capel, of course, who recruited the Rams players and rebuilt the VCU program before leaving after last season to take over as the coach at Oklahoma. (Big-time credit, though, to first-year VCU coach Anthony Grant, the former Florida assistant who has clearly forgotten how to lose in the NCAA tournament.)

2. The NCAA tournament committee's biggest mistake was to put Louisville in Lexington. How can you allow a No. 6 seed to have such an important home-court advantage over No. 3-seeded Texas A&M in the second round. Rupp Arena was a sea of red for the 'Ville's blowout of Stanford, and it'll only get bigger for Saturday's second-round showdown with Billy Gillispie's crew. Overall, the 'Bag thinks this year's tournament committee did a nice job with the brackets, even if a few teams were over- or under-seeded. (Virginia a No. 4 seed?) But providing such a huge boost to a No. 6 seed was a major, major mistake.

3. I have two new favorite players. One of them (of course) is VCU's Maynor. The other is Eastern Kentucky's Darnell Dialls, who delivered the sickest block I've seen the entire college basketball season by rejecting a dunk by UNC stud Brandan Wright. You had to see it to believe it, and fortunately I was sitting 20 feet away as the 6-foot-8 Dialls measured up the 6-foot-10 Wright and fed his slam attempt back into his face. Unreal. Combine it with EKU's ridiculous comeback (from being down 39-12 to 48-44), and it almost didn't matter that UNC pulled away for a 21-point win.

"I don't think he could see me coming, so I just went after it," Dialls told me afterward. "I know I surprised him. I probably surprised everybody in there." The big question was which came first after Dialls' block: the YouTube clip that will do his feat justice, or the first Kentucky fan to notice that he's from Lexington and ask why the !@#$% Tubby Smith didn't recruit the guy. Dialls is only a junior, which means I'm starting my Darnell Dialls for All-America campaign today.

4. Georgetown's Roy Hibbert is one of the most fascinating 7-foot-2 players the 'Bag has ever seen. I've been watching Big Roy on the tube all season, but he's one of those guys who reveals multitudes when you see him in person from a courtside seat. For starters, his feet are amazingly nimble for a player of his size. Whenever the Hoyas were playing zone against Belmont, Hibbert would flash out to the shooter in the right corner with remarkable speed. I was 10 feet away, and it was scary as hell to see him advance toward the shooter (and me) like some menacing moving mountain.

Hibbert is clearly not your typical 7-footer, which is both good and bad. The good: He has really nice skills, low-post finesse moves, smart scoring instincts and a vision for passing that is breathtaking for a big man. The bad: Hibbert could be a heck of a lot more intimidating down low. If anyone needs Bill Walton to get in his ear and yell "Throw it down, big man!" it's Hibbert. Have you ever seen a 7foot-2 guy get stuffed by the rim while trying to dunk? That's what happened to Big Roy on Thursday. We can't wait to see him take on B.C, though.

5. The ACC is the nation's best conference. We've known this for weeks, of course, but we wanted to acknowledge that in print after our SI story in January argued that the Pac-10 was the top league in the land. That was true at the time, but since then Arizona and Washington have fallen off the map, while other Pac-10 teams just haven't kept up with the volume of quality across the board in the ACC. Thursday's games have only ratified the ACC's superiority: both B.C. and Maryland were solid in their victories, while Stanford was an absolute disaster against Louisville. Can we finally stop citing Stanford's win at Virginia as some sort of giant-killing feat?

Sports Illustrated senior writer Grant Wahl covers college basketball for the magazine and SI.com.