As Kansas State point guard Angel Rodriguez tried to drive baseline during the last possession of his team's NCAA tournament matchup with La Salle on Friday, Wildcats coach Bruce Weber already regretted not stopping the clock to draw up a final play.

A frantic Weber unsuccessfully tried to get the referees' attention to call timeout with about two seconds to go, a sure sign things weren't going as planned.

Rodriguez wanted to free himself via a Thomas Gipson screen to take game-tying shot, but they botched the timing of the play and the La Salle defender was able to get over the top with ease. Walled off from the rim and lacking any other option but to shoot, Rodriguez hoisted up a baseline prayer from behind the backboard that predictably failed to draw iron, condemning fourth-seeded Kansas State to a 63-61 upset loss to the 13th-seeded Explorers.

"All year we've just went and tried to make a play down the stretch," Weber said. "Once I saw it was bogged up, I tried to call timeout. I know it's tough on the officials because they're focusing on the game. I was sitting right with them. I looked at the clock at 2.2. I yelled it as loud as I could, but we didn't get the call. Sometimes things aren't meant to be."

Kansas State's setback was especially crushing because the Wildcats had to deliver a nearly perfect second half just to have a chance to win the game at all. They rallied from 18 points down at halftime behind superior interior play and relentless defense, holding La Salle to just three made field goals in the second half and to zero in the final 7:55.

Marshall Henderson. (Getty Images)

If you don't already have an opinion on Marshall Henderson, the intensely polarizing guard from Ole Miss, you're about to. After nearly shooting his team out of the tournament and then shooting down Wisconsin, Henderson has found himself right in the middle of the spotlight ... which is pretty much what he's wanted all along.

The CBS crew, including Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith, said after Ole Miss' upset win that they'd love to play with Henderson. Nice endorsement, that, but it was a tweet during the game itself that set Henderson off:

James was, of course, referring to the fact that Henderson was apparently permitted to shoot any time he was within two time zones of the goal. (He missed 12 of his first 13 shots, including going 0 for 6 from three-point range, before finding his stroke to finish with 19 points.) And how did Henderson react when

Maybe Marshall Henderson is getting exactly what he wants with his antics.

Whether he's pounding his chest after big shots, doing the rooster as he runs down court, shouting at fans, cutting short press conferences, posing for a picture in handcuffs with a police officer or telling us all how little he cares about what we think in interviews.

People can't stop talking about the Ole Miss guard. Even LeBron James took to Twitter today to share his thoughts on Henderson's performance in an NCAA tournament victory over Wisconsin.

(USA Today Sports Images)

The only thing worse than losing early in the NCAA tournament for Missouri would be losing at any time to long-time rival Kansas.

The Tigers managed to do both, sort of, Thursday night when they bowed out of March Madness early for the second straight year with an 84-72 loss to Colorado State.

The Rams' leading scorer in the game was Dorian Green, a senior guard who grew up in Lawrence, Kan., in the shadow of the University of Kansas. Green was a huge Jayhawks fan as a kid and never cared for the Tigers much for obvious reasons.

On the eve of his team's opening-round NCAA tournament matchup against Wisconsin, Ole Miss guard Marshall Henderson offered some insight into his mindset.

"I'm trying to get paid here soon because I'm tired of doing all this stuff for free," he said. "And this is where you make your money, the NCAA tournament."

[Also: NCAA tourney an event made for Las Vegas]

The performance that followed from Henderson was exactly what you'd expect from a trigger-happy gunner trying to make a name for himself and prove he's worthy of earning a paycheck someday. He shot the ball. Often.

Shaking off a nightmarish 1 of 13 start from the field with hardly a care, Henderson caught fire in the final 12 minutes and carried 12th-seeded Ole Miss to a 57-46 upset of the fifth-seeded Badgers. Hendserson scored 17 of his game-high 19 points during the Rebels' game-ending 27-10 blitz, a run he started with back-to-back threes that got him going after an ice-cold start.

The biggest shot from Henderson was a 25-footer with 2:52 left that answered a 3-pointer from Traevon Jackson and extended Ole Miss' lead back to six. That shot appeared to suck the life out of the Badgers and gave the Rebels the energy they needed to finish off the upset.

Why would Ole Miss coach Andy Kennedy encourage Henderson to keep shooting despite so many ghastly off-balance jump shots in the first 28 minutes? Well, probably because Kennedy knows the rest of his defense-oriented roster needs a perimeter player to provide instant offense, and Henderson is the best option he has. The 6-foot-2 junior shot only 38.5 percent from the field this season yet led the SEC in scoring at 20.5 points per game.

One of the few downsides of March Madness is that you are going to watch hours upon hours of basketball on the same channels with the same sponsors. This means you will see hours upon hours of the same commercials. Most of the time, they are harmless. Every once in a while, there is a legitimately enjoyable ad. But on occasion, an ad comes along that is so confusing and repeated so often that it needs to be addressed.

The commercial is entitled “Tiger Wings,” and is for Miller Lite, and as far as I know, it just started airing with the start of the tournament on Thursday (it was uploaded to YouTube by the Miller Lite corporate account on Tuesday). I realize it is insane to break down a thirty-second light beer commercial on a college basketball blog, but here we are. The opening exchange goes as follows:

Waitress, approaching table: Can I get you a Miller Lite?

Patron: Mmm, not tonight, I’m the driver.

Shabazz Muhammad (Getty Images)

In an era when young players work with the finest trainers, crisscross the country going to tournaments and change high schools three or four times in search of the best showcase for their talents, the lengths families go to groom a pro prospect is well-known.

Still, the Los Angeles Times managed to uncover a nugget about heralded UCLA freshman Shabazz Muhammad that is definitely eye-opening.

According to a story published hours before UCLA's opening-round NCAA tournament game against Minnesota on Friday night, Muhammad is one year older than he and his family have claimed he is. UCLA's men's basketball media guide lists his date of birth as Nov. 13, 1993, but Times reporter Ken Bensinger discovered that his birth certificate on file with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health shows was born exactly one year earlier.

[Also: NCAA tournament Friday viewer guide]

Muhammad's bio on UCLA's official athletics site has since been updated.

Asked about the discrepancy by Bensinger, Muhammad's father, Ron Holmes, initially said it "must be a mistake." He later acknowledged his son is actually 20 years old but expressed concern about the information being reported, even going so far as to offer Bensinger a job in return for his cooperation.

"Bazz is going to blow up in the NBA lets team up and blow this thing up!!!" Holmes texted, according to Bensinger. "I'm going to need a publicist anyway why shouldn't it be you. We can do some big things together."

It's not hard to guess the motivation for Muhammad's family shaving a year off the his age at some point during his childhood.

So Harvard torched your bracket on Thursday? You're not alone. There are almost no perfect brackets remaining after just one day of the NCAA Tournament.

Yahoo! Sports collected 3,329,638 bracket entries this year. And of that total, guess how many perfect brackets there were?

374.

Yep, 374 out of 3.3 million. That's a percentage of 0.012.

Harvard was the big kicker, of course. Only 141,353, or 4.5 percent, of all brackets picked Harvard, and as you can see, most of those had incorrect picks elsewhere. Some more stats:

• Through the first eight games, only 173,203 brackets remained perfect. So, yeah, most of us were out before dinnertime.

• In 2012, there were no brackets that hit 16 of 16 on Day 1, and only two that hit 30 of the first 32 games. (You'll recall that 2012 was the year two #2 seeds, Duke and Missouri, bowed out in the initial round.)

• 2011 featured three brackets with 31 of 32 right; 2010 had just one with a single miss; and 2009 was kind to the seeds, with 11 picking 31