By MIKE LOPRESTI
Gannett News Service

Doesn't take long to get rid of 49 teams, does it?

The No. 1 ranked team is gone. The No. 1 seeded team is gone. A first weekend that began softly with rare surprises ended with an upset that rattled the bracket and left the commonwealth of Kentucky mumbling into its angrily-poured bourbon. While the 16 surviving dancers take a break in the NCAA Tournament, we can clean up the first two rounds with some awards and citations.

• Weapons of mass destruction ... Small guards, some of them quick enough to go through a car wash and not need a towel. Saint Joseph's has Jameer Nelson. Illinois has Dee Brown. Xavier has Lionel Chalmers. Duke has Chris Duhon. Wake Forest has Chris Paul. All were pivotal last week and will be again this week. Oh, and the 5-11 kid from UAB who put a knife through Kentucky Sunday was Mo Finley. The big guys do not run the NCAA Tournament. You survive and advance with guards.

• Team for the West to rally around ... No. 10 seed Nevada? Guess so. It's the only team left from Pacific and Mountain time.

• Meaningless number prize ... Stanford, whose demise guaranteed that for the 19th time in the last 22 years, the No. 1 team in the final Associated Press poll will not win the national championship.

• Regional that followed the script ... East Rutherford, where all four top seeds made it through.

• Regional that is making this up as it goes along ... St. Louis. Kentucky and Gonzaga are history. That leaves No. 3 Georgia Tech, No. 4 Kansas, No. 9 UAB and No. 10 Nevada.

• Shaquille O'Neal lookalike contest ... DePaul's Andre Brown, 0-for-10 from the free throw line against Dayton.

• Would have made nice highlights, but ... Upset victims, Kentucky, Stanford, Maryland and North Carolina State all had last-second shots to tie or win. None went in.

• Teams with Big Mo ... Duke won its first two games 96-61 and 90-62. Illinois won by 19 and 24. Xavier, beating No. 2 seed Mississippi State by 15, has looked unstoppable since it dismantled Saint Joseph's in the Atlantic 10 Tournament.

• Hotbeds with headaches ... The basketball holy lands of Indiana and Kentucky have no teams left. On the other hand, Alabama has two.

• Upset of the week everybody saw coming ... Manhattan over Florida, who barely put up an argument, leaving Billy Donovan with much to answer about his program.

• It's a bluegrass bummer when history repeats itself ... One of the most shocking Tournament upsets to ever befall Joe B. Hall's regime at Kentucky was in the 1981 second round. To UAB.

• The league most like disappearing ink ... The Pac-10. Vanished by Saturday night. John Wooden, we hardly knew ye.

• Best locker room message of the week ... "They weren't over-rated. We were under-rated." Words to live by for Alabama, a team with 12 defeats, after it dumped Stanford.

• Life was much better as Cinderella ... Gonzaga, blown away as a No. 2 seed in Seattle. Accepting the award will be star guard Blake Stepp, who shot 2 for 11 one game and 3 for 18 the next, and then decided, "If I ever make it to the NBA, I hope I don't have to play in Key Arena."

• Annual update ... No. 16 seeds are now 0-80 since the Tournament expanded to 64 teams. No near-misses this year, with the margins of defeat 35, 26, 20 and 19. Someone has to take it in the neck the first weekend. Who knew Kentucky and Stanford wouldn't last any longer than Manhattan and Pacific?