The first full day of the 2026 NCAA tournament did what March Madness is supposed to do. Favorites sweated. Underdogs delivered. A historic program finally got its first win. And the No. 1 overall seed needed a 15-4 closing run just to avoid becoming one of the biggest upsets in tournament history.
Only 47 games remain, and the bracket is already complicated.
Duke survives but the warning signs are real
For much of Thursday afternoon, No. 1 overall seed Duke looked like it was about to make NCAA tournament history for all the wrong reasons. No. 16 seed Siena, coached by former Syracuse star Gerry McNamara, held a 47-34 second-half lead and had the Blue Devils on the ropes. Duke eventually rallied to win 71-65, but the performance raised serious questions heading into Saturday’s second-round matchup against TCU.
Duke was already shorthanded entering the tournament. Starting point guard for Duke Caleb Foster is sidelined with a foot injury and is not expected to return until late in a deep run, if at all. Starting center Patrick Ngongba is also out with a foot injury, though his status for the TCU game remains unclear. That left Duke running a seven-man rotation, with Nikolas Khamenia and Darren Harris logging all 33 bench minutes between them.
McNamara’s strategy of playing only his five starters for nearly the entire game almost worked. Siena ran out of energy down the stretch, but the fact that a team finishing third in the MAAC regular season came within a possession of pulling off one of the most stunning upsets in tournament history says something about where Duke currently stands.
VCU stuns North Carolina in historic comeback
North Carolina’s tournament struggles deepened Thursday in painful fashion. The sixth-seeded Tar Heels built a 19-point lead over No. 11 seed VCU before watching it disappear entirely. The Rams scored 12 consecutive points to force overtime and finished with an 82-78 win, completing the sixth-largest comeback in NCAA tournament history and the largest ever in a first-round game.
Terrence Hill Jr. scored 34 points for VCU and hit the go-ahead three-pointer with 15.1 seconds left in overtime to seal it. For North Carolina, it marked a second straight first-round exit and continued a troubling pattern since head coach Hubert Davis guided the program to the 2022 national championship game.
High Point and the case for mid-majors
No. 12 seed High Point delivered one of the day’s better stories, rallying from 10 points down to beat No. 5 seed Wisconsin 83-82. Senior guard Chase Johnston hit the go-ahead layup with 11.2 seconds remaining for the first two-point field goal of his entire season. Johnston had shot 0 for 4 from inside the arc across 32 games before that moment.
High Point coach Flynn Clayman used the postgame spotlight to address a broader frustration shared by mid-major programs across the country. Power conference teams, he argued, routinely decline to schedule mid-majors during the regular season and then use the lack of quality wins against those same programs when tournament seedings are assigned. The results on Thursday, he suggested, make his point for him.
Nebraska ends a painful streak
No. 4 seed Nebraska beat No. 13 seed Troy 76-47 Thursday afternoon, and while the score was not especially dramatic, the context was enormous. The Cornhuskers entered the game as the only power conference program in the country that had never won an NCAA tournament game. Nine previous appearances, dating back to 1986, had produced nine first-round exits.
That streak is over. Nebraska is now 1-8 in tournament play and faces No. 5 seed Vanderbilt in the second round Saturday.
What to watch on Day 2
The second day of the men’s tournament runs alongside the opening day of the women’s bracket. Key men’s games include No. 6 seed Tennessee against No. 11 Miami (Ohio) at 4:25 p.m. ET on TBS, No. 5 seed St. John’s against No. 11 Northern Iowa at 7:10 p.m. ET on CBS, and No. 4 seed Kansas against No. 13 California Baptist at 9:45 p.m. ET on CBS.
