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Kansas brought a ton of fans to Tulsa, plus a Hall of Fame coach and the likely National Player of the Year. It’s a treat having the Jayhawks in town, but it’s nowhere near the best story at this NCAA regional.

For that, we turn to Charles Cook, who plays trumpet in the UC Davis band. Cook told me about his university’s annual “Picnic Day,” where “clubs come together and do different things, and professors put together science shows and do stuff where they put something in a balloon, pop it and have sparks shoot out, and the crowd goes, ‘Woooo!’

Cook genuinely enjoyed sharing this with me Thursday, then he went out and played “Carry on Wayward Son” with similar gusto while the No. 16 seed UC Davis Aggies practiced at the BOK Center.

The Aggies are the darlings of the Midwest Region and Tulsa, at least until they face top seed Kansas on Friday. Reality strikes, most likely, when the ball goes up at 5:50 p.m.

But then the score of that game isn’t really important. It’s having a story like UC Davis in town long enough for them to share it.