The Best Late Night Event In Sports Always Delivers: A Quick Ode The Most Chaotic, Entertaining Day In The Maui Invitational History

I wasn't really sure how I wanted to write this blog. Quite frankly as an old dad these days staying up until 2:45am and waking back up 630 is a quick turnaround for these old bag of bones. So pardon for any delirious ranting, but what we saw yesterday was the single greatest day in Maui Invitational history. It's exactly why it's the single greatest event in the regular season of college basketball. 

We know how the day started, we all were awake for that one: 

No need to recap that game again. Somehow this wasn't even the best game of the day? You could argue it was, but we saw craziness even after a dagger three to go to OT, a 13-point comeback with 4 minutes to go and a technical foul decide the game. Sure, Michigan State/Colorado was a blowout. Colorado is doing its job of being Chaminade without them in the Tournament.

But it's about the late night games. The best game of the day was Iowa State vs Auburn, it was the first time we had a top-5 matchup in Day 1 of Maui. 

I'll be honest, I don't know how you kill this Auburn team. Iowa State was up 18 and this isn't some bad Iowa State team. They look the part of being a top-5 team in the country. It's not like Auburn did this at home, against a whatever program. Hell, Iowa State didn't even go into stall ball or anything like that. Auburn is just one of those teams that when they start shooting, they don't miss. If a couple guys start making it, everyone makes it. That's basically what happened here before Broome got the tip-in. 

Then you had the Dayton/UNC game go until 2am: 

This is the sort of game I will scream at people who say the regular season doesn't matter. It does. This game mattered for a team like Dayton. They get a limited amount of quad 1 opportunities that can give them an at-large bid if they don't win the A-10. They blew it. It was haymaker after haymaker the last couple of minutes and we had another Kevin Durant shoe situation: 

We even had poor Roy Williams taking charges. Head on a swivel Roy! 

It's sort of fitting that we had this chaos with it being the first day of the Maui without Bill Walton. He was still all over the broadcast yesterday and rightfully so. All I know is this was the most entertaining, best day of basketball Maui has ever seen. 3 games were classics. We're looking at Iowa State/UConn maybe playing for 5th place at best. This is what the bracket looks like: 

Ridiculous from start to finish. The fact it's back at the Lahaina Civic Center, with the best rims in the country, makes it even better. This is how the Maui Invitational should be and why it always needs to be like this. There has been rumors of it maybe falling apart down the road because of logistics and other events, but we can't lose this.