Winners and Losers of the Men's 2026 NCAA Tournament Thursday First Round
Few days on the sports calendar compare to the opening round of the NCAA basketball tournament, as brackets are busted and heroes are born in the opening days of March Madness.
The wait was a short one for the first major upset of 2026, as No. 12 seed High Point upended No. 5 seed Wisconsin during the early slate of games, and that set the tone for an exciting Thursday of action from across the college basketball landscape.
The winners won and the losers lost in each of the day's matchups, but let's take a deeper dive into some of the notable storylines from Thursday's action to highlight our biggest winners and losers of the day.
Winner: Nebraska's First NCAA Tournament Win
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In the sprawling 86-year history of the NCAA tournament, the Nebraska Cornhuskers were the only major conference team to never record a victory during March Madness, going 0-8.
Make that 1-8.
This year's group climbed as high as No. 5 in the AP poll while starting the year 20-0, but wound up with a No. 4 seed following a 6-5 finish to the regular season and a first-round exit in the Big Ten tournament.
The Troy Trojans came out strong, and led 15-12 midway through the first half before Pryce Sandfort hit back-to-back three-pointers to kick off a 20-4 run. The Cornhuskers never looked back, cruising to a lopsided 76-47 victory.
Sandfort led all scorers with 23 points, knocking down 7-of-12 three-point attempts. The Nebraska defense also looked stout, limiting the Trojans to 28 percent shooting from the field while forcing 17 turnovers.
Loser: Ohio State's Second-Half Comeback
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Looking at the final score, No. 9 seed TCU sneaking out a 66-64 victory over No. 8 seed Ohio State reads like a back-and-forth game between two evenly matched opponents.
However, this one was shaping up to be a blowout at one point, with the Horned Frogs carrying a 39-24 lead into halftime.
The break seemingly came at the perfect time, as the Buckeyes opened the second half with a 16-4 run, and they took the lead when an Amare Bynum layup with 7:24 remaining made it a 51-50 game.
That set up a thrilling finish, and the two teams were locked at 64-64 with 34 seconds remaining after Ohio State's all-time leading scorer Bruce Thornton drilled a three-pointer.
The Horned Frogs answered with a patient possession that ended in an easy bucket for Xavier Edmonds with four seconds remaining, and Thornton's desperation heave as time expired clanged off the backboard.
Props to the Buckeyes for storming back from what was shaping up to be a blow out, but it's TCU that advances on to the second round.
Winner: Chase Johnston's First 2-Point Basket
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High Point senior sharp-shooter Chase Johnston is a three-point specialist to the extreme.
Entering the NCAA tournament, he had taken 136 shots on the season, and 132 of them came from three-point range where he shot a blistering 48.5 percent as one of the nation's most efficient deep threats.
He was 0-for-4 on his attempts inside the arc.
It was more of the same throughout the Panthers opening round matchup with No. 5 seed Wisconsin, as he went 4-of-6 on three-pointers and those were his only shot attempts until the game's closing seconds.
Then he suddenly found himself on the scoring end of a fast-break layup with 11.7 seconds remaining that gave High Point an 83-82 lead, and that held up as the final score in the first high-profile upset of the 2026 NCAA tournament.
The victory was the first ever for High Point against a major conference opponent, as they were 0-57 in those games coming into Thursday.
Loser: South Florida's Favorable Upset Bid
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For a variety of reasons, one of the most popular upset picks on the board in this year's first round was No. 11 South Florida over No. 6 Louisville.
The Bulls entered the NCAA tournament riding an 11-game winning streak, and despite light resume in a down year from the AAC, they finished No. 47 in KenPom's rankings with a top-50 defense and an offense that ranked eighth in the nation with 87.7 points per game.
Add to that the fact that Louisville was without star freshman Mikel Brown Jr. (18.2 PPG, 4.7 APG) who is sidelined with a back injury, and the Cardinals looked ripe for an upset.
Instead, Isaac McKneely (23 points, 7/10 3PT) picked up the scoring slack, more than doubling his scoring average of 10.6 points per game.
The Cardinals sprinted out to a 10-point halftime lead and were up by as many as 23 points. They ended up needing every bit of that cushion, weathering a second-half push from the Bulls to sneak away with an 83-79 victory.
Winner: Duke's Lesson Learned
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"We thought it was going to be a cakewalk going into this game so now we know what it is so we just have to respond back."
That's what Duke forward Maliq Brown told CBS reporter Tracy Wolfson going into halftime as the No. 1 seed Blue Devils looked up at a 43-32 deficit on the scoreboard against No. 16 seed Siena.
While it's generally unwise to admit on national TV that you thought the game was going to be a cake walk, the end result could be a Duke team better prepared for the pressure cooker of March Madness.
An 11-0 run inside the final eight minutes gave Duke the lead for good en route to a 71-65 victory, and now the Blue Devils know anything but their best performance will be met with resistance.
Despite the scare, All-American Cameron Boozer still finished with 22 points and 13 rebounds in his NCAA tournament debut.
Tip of the cap to the Siena starting lineup, as all five guys played 40 minutes.
Loser: AJ Dybantsa's Early Exit
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AJ Dybantsa arrived at BYU as the most talked about freshman in the 2025 recruiting class, and he more than lived up to the hype, leading the nation with 25.3 points per game while earning first team All-American honors.
One of the leading candidates to go No. 1 overall in the 2026 draft, Dybantsa is all but certain to be one-and-done at BYU, and his team followed suit in a short-lived NCAA tournament run.
The No. 6 seed Cougars were upset 79-71 by No. 11 seed Texas, as the Longhorns continued where they left off in a thrilling victory over NC State in the First Four on Tuesday.
To his credit, Dybantsa did everything he could to prolong his college career, logging 35 points and 10 rebounds while playing all 40 minutes. The real loser here is college basketball fans for not getting a longer look at the supremely talented freshman on the sport's biggest stage.
If co-star Richie Saunders (18.0 PPG) had not suffered a torn ACL in mid-February, this BYU team might have been a legitimate Final Four threat. Instead, they go down as one of the biggest "what if" stories of the 2025-26 season.
Winner: Terrence Hill Jr.'s Rise to Stardom
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Terrence Hill Jr. averaged just 6.3 minutes and 3.4 points per game as a freshman, and he wasn't even supposed to end up at VCU, originally committing to Utah State as an unranked recruit.
He took another step toward solidifying his status as one of the most improved players in the nation, leading the Rams to an upset victory over No. 6 North Carolina in overtime.
The A-10 Sixth Man of the Year entered the NCAA tournament leading the Rams in scoring at 14.4 points per game. In 40 minutes of action off the bench on Friday night, he poured in a game-high 34 points to anchor the upset.
The 6'3" sophomore made several effortless drives through the Tar Heels defense for easy lay-ups, while also knocking down 7-of-10 from beyond the arc, showcasing a well-rounded offensive game that North Carolina was simply unable to stop.
VCU was a popular upset pick squaring off against a North Carolina team playing without star freshman Caleb Wilson, but a 30-point performance from Hill was likely not on many college basketball fan's radar when they made that pick.
His season-high was 24 points, so Friday was uncharted territory.
Loser: SEC's Perfect Day Ruined By Georgia
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With Houston, Illinois and Gonzaga in action, the late cluster of games looked prime for multiple blowouts. Meanwhile, Georgia vs. Saint Louis matchup on the No. 8 vs. No. 9 line profiled as one of the best matchups of the day on paper.
The Bulldogs entered the NCAA tournament with the No. 12 offense in KenPom's adjusted efficiency metric, averaging 89.8 points per game while playing at one of the fastest tempos of any team in this year's field.
On the other side, the Billikens play with an equally frenetic pace, and rank as one of the best outside shooting teams in the country. They knock down 10.9 threes per game at a 40.1 percent clip that ranked second in the nation.
It had all the makings of a high-scoring shootout, but instead it ended up being one of the most lopsided games of the day.
Saint Louis lived up to its end of the bargain, racking up 102 points even with a lackluster 32.1 percent shooting night from three-point range and only nine made threes. Meanwhile, Georgia managed just 77 points, and in the process fell to 3-7 on the year in games where they scored below 80 points.
With that, what was shaping up to be a perfect day for the SEC ended on a dud, following earlier victories by No. 4 Arkansas, No. 5 Vanderbilt, No. 10 Texas A&M and No. 11 Texas.
