DAYTON, Ohio - The tournament could have been played without George Mason, and nobody outside of Fairfax, Va., would have noticed. The team without an NCAA tournament victory in its history - a team that put the “mid” in mid-major, a team playing without its best player - beat a power conference powerhouse here Friday night. And even if it wasn't the biggest upset of the day - Northwestern State beating Iowa has that distinction - it was big enough for George Mason, which after 27 years of big-time basketball discovered the true joy of March Madness.

Only loyalists overdosed on optimism had George Mason beating Tom Izzo and Michigan State in this first-round game. Since 1999 the Spartans have been to the Final Four four times. They started three future pros, maybe three lottery picks Friday night. And George Mason, with their best player, Tony Skinn, suspended and in street clothes for punching a kid in the crotch two weeks ago, beat 'em anyway. No. 11 beat No. 6. The CAA beat the Big Ten.

You think Billy Packer got that one right on his bracket?

Anybody who follows college basketball closely knows the names Shannon Brown, Maurice Ager and Paul Davis. They were high school all-Americans. They were in the Final Four last year. They're going to get rich in the NBA soon enough. On the flip side, nobody outside of Fairfax knows Gabe Norwood, Will Thomas, Folarin Campbell, Jai Lewis, Sammy Hernandez and Jordan Carter. They play for George Mason.

Georgetown felt pretty darned good after winning its first NCAA tournament game since 2001. George Mason was positively euphoric after its first NCAA tournament game, period.

The Patriots could easily have been in the NIT, you know. They could have been playing with Maryland and Cincinnati and Temple. They had a great regular season, going 23-7, and finishing with a RPI of 30. But they lost to Hofstra twice in the last week of the season, and Hofstra, ridiculously enough, wasn't invited to the party while Mason was.

And then it really started. Packer, who let me say is the very best in the business of analyzing and commenting on college basketball games, got his boxers all in a bunch because in his way of thinking the power conferences - Big Ten, Big East, ACC, Big 12, SEC, Pacific-10 - didn't get enough bids. Packer, it seems, would just as soon every school not in those conferences - the ones who, by the way, do business with his network, CBS - be sent out of the country after their little conference tournaments. That includes the CAA, the Colonial Athletic Association for those of you alphabetically challenged.

George Mason has been to the NCAA tournament only four times, never as an at-large team. In fact, the last time a team other than the CAA's tournament champ was invited to the NCAAs was in 1986. So, it should come as no surprise that some folks were chanting Packer's name when George Mason finally closed out Michigan State.

Who would have thought that George Mason would have less drama in its opening round game than George Washington? Who would have thought that all three Georges would advance to the second round? It was no great surprise that Georgetown beat Northern Iowa, though 7-foot-2 Roy Hibbert's almost daily improvement is quite a story.

Nobody outside of Fairfax has Mason beating the Royal Tar Heels, either - not Packer, not me, not anybody unless they're simply picking teams with green uniforms. But the tournament, at its best, produced just these kinds of results, the ones where the school that doesn't know any better beats the team everybody thinks will advance. It's a real good thing this tournament wasn't played without George Mason, after all.

Wilbon is a sports columnist

for The Washington Post