Noah Fries | staff writer

The 2026 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament kicked off last weekend with a number of upsets and eye-popping headlines.

The first three days of the tournament resulted in record-breaking viewership, with the tournament averaging 9.8 million viewers over that span — the most since CBS and TNT began streaming all games in 2011. The prime-time window on Thursday night averaged 12.5 million, good for the most watched first-round window in tournament history, according to Nielsen.

The biggest storyline of the weekend was the dominance of the Big Ten Conference. After having nine teams make it to the big dance, six of those advanced to the Sweet 16. The conference had never seen more than four Sweet 16 teams in a single tournament before this season.

Michigan, Purdue, Illinois, Michigan State, Nebraska and Iowa will look to be the first team from the Big Ten to win the tournament since 2000, when Michigan State defeated Florida 89-76.

The Round of 64 had eight total upsets, with four of those being the No. 9 seed defeating the No. 8 seed. The other four upsets had No. 12 High Point outlasting No. 5 Wisconsin, No. 11 Texas defeating No. 6 BYU, No. 10 Texas A&M beating No. 7 Saint Mary’s and No. 11 VCU coming back to beat No. 6 North Carolina in overtime.

High Point, who was a 10.5-point underdog coming into the game, battled back-and-forth with the Badgers for the entire game. Down by 1 with 16 seconds remaining, the Panthers gathered a defensive rebound and hit guard Chase Johnston with an outlet pass that led to the game-winning layup.

The fast-break layup was Johnston’s first 2-point field goal of the season. The sharpshooter came into the game shooting 64 of 132 (48.5%) from 3-point range but had attempted just four shots from inside the arc.

“I wasn’t really thinking about whether it was a 2 or a 3,” Johnston said. “I was just trying to put it in and win the game.”

In VCU’s overtime victory over the Tar Heels, the Rams clawed back in the second half to erase a 19-point deficit and send the game to overtime. Guard Terrence Hill Jr., who had 34 points from the bench, nailed a dagger stepback 3-pointer with 15 seconds left in overtime to notch VCU’s first tournament win since 2016.

“I know my team needs me down the stretch,” Hill said. “Going into the second half, I wanted to be as aggressive as possible. When the plays were there for me to make them, I was going to make them. And if my teammates were open, I was going to hit them.”

“This game was the perfect microcosm of who this group has been,” VCU Head Coach Phil Martelli Jr. said. “They’ve been resilient as much as any group I’ve ever been around. We’ve done it all year.”

Other notable headlines of the Round of 64 games include No. 16 Siena nearly upsetting No. 1 overall seed Duke, No. 7 Kentucky narrowly avoiding an upset bid by No. 10 Santa Clara in overtime and No. 4 Nebraska earning its first win in tournament history over No. 13 Troy.

The biggest headline of the Round of 32 was No. 9 Iowa knocking off the reigning national champions in No. 1 Florida. Down by two late in the game, Iowa guard Bennett Stirtz broke Florida’s full-court press and hit forward Alvaro Folgueiras in the corner for the game-winning 3-pointer with 4.5 seconds remaining — sending the Hawkeyes to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1999.

“This is really special,” Folgueiras said. “March is for the dreamers, and there’s no better dreamer than us. It’s incredible. We have to keep going. We are one of the 16 best teams in the country. We’re still hungry.”

The only seed lower than No. 9 that advanced to the Sweet 16 was No. 11 Texas, who upset No. 3 Gonzaga to win its third tournament game in five days.

Guard Camden Heide hit his only field goal of the game with 14 seconds left, a dagger 3-pointer to put the Longhorns up four. Texas became the first team since UCLA in 2021 to go from the First Four to the Sweet 16, with UCLA making a run to the Final Four in that season.

“Our ride has never been easy,” Texas Head Coach Sean Miller said. “But we fought the good fight the whole way, and we did it again.”

Noah Fries can be reached at friesn@duq.edu