After four days of being planted on the couch, yelling, screaming, whooping at the TV (attention neighbors: my apologies), excitedly watching close games and blowouts, I'm left with one thought about the Sweet Sixteen field:

Where's the madness?

Sure, we were treated to some thrilling upsets and surprises in the past few days. The Big 12 was called the country's best conference all year — until it suffered three defeats Thursday and watched only two of seven bids survive the opening weekend. Eight-seed N.C. State — one of five ACC teams in the Sweet Sixteen — became the first to knock off a No. 1 on Saturday, when the Wolfpack held off a late charge from Villanova. Seven-seed Michigan State, on the back of a red-hot Travis Trice turned the tables on No. 2 seed Virginia on Sunday shortly before 7-seed Wichita State took down its better-known neighbor, 2-seed Kansas.

And yes, the weekend's conclusion brought some lasting memories and promises of great matchups. (Wichita State-Notre Dame or Wisconsin-North Carolina, anybody?). But after a Thursday morning that stunned both my projected champion, Iowa State, fellow 3-seed Baylor and all of Twitter, the Sweet Sixteen results were shockingly shock-less. In an environment that so often ushers in a new darling — sending basketball fans scrambling for rosters to find out just who these guys are — this year's field of 16 is somewhat predictable.

The curveballs we officially "met" Tuesday and Thursday — Alabama-Birmingham, Georgia State, Hampton — are all long gone. Among the 16 teams that remain, all but three (Utah, Gonzaga and Oklahoma) have made a Sweet Sixteen trip in the previous three years, and only one squad (Utah) has gone longer than six seasons without reaching that peak. UCLA, an 11 seed, is the only double-digit seed, but the Bruins were here last year — and anyone who paid attention to basketball in, say, the 1960s, 70s, 90s and the bulk of this century would have a hard time calling them an underdog. This time around, UCLA's entry price was the dispensing of UAB, one of the only true Cinderellas left on Saturday.

Michigan State? Hard to label the Spartans' advancement as an upset when coach Tom Izzo has a winning percentage of 83.3 in the round of 32, surpassing Duke's Mike Krzyzewski and the late Dean Smith of North Carolina. Wichita State, upset or not, was stripped of its Cinderella status after plowing to the Final Four in 2013. Louisville (4) and West Virginia (5) didn't have big seed advantages Sunday, but both boast significantly more recent tournament success than the teams they downed — 5-seed Northern Iowa and 4-seed Maryland, respectively.

Willie Cauley-Stein and No. 1 Kentucky cruised into the Sweet 16. Most of the other teams joining them have a substantial basketball pedigree, too.

Not to say our new lot is boring — surely there will be more screaming at the TV in the coming weeks — but the rags-to-riches drama has been shaved away. I'm guessing a lot of people chose at least one long shot to hang around in their brackets. Mine was BYU, which unfortunately didn't even make it past the first day of play-in games. Others that were discussed among the masses included Stephen F. Austin, Eastern Washington and Wofford. All, though, bowed out in some way or another, leaving us, mostly, with more of the same.

In so many years, brackets are burned for failing to include the unexpected Cinderella. This season, gamblers might be punished for not picking enough chalk.

Amelia Rayno amelia.rayno@startribune.com