The 2026 March Madness tournament has begun for both the women’s and men’s NCAA DI basketball championships. Both include 64 teams that are all ranked based on regular-season play, along with performances in the conference tournament held beforehand.
The women’s side does not usually see a lot of upsets in the bracket, and that trend continued in the first two rounds of the tournament. Two nine-seed teams upset eight-seed teams in the larger round-of-64. There was one shining star from the women’s side that made waves in the tournament, and that was the University of Virginia (UVA). In the round of 64, they had the biggest upset out of any team, defeating the seventh-seeded Georgia as a 10-seed.
The team then moved into the round of 32, where it was up against the powerful Iowa Hawkeyes, ranked second in its region. Through a lot of back-and-forth and high-quality basketball, UVA delivered Iowa a trip back to the cornfields to capture the biggest upset in the women’s tournament so far.
The first games of the Sweet 16 round for the women’s tournament begin on Friday, March 27, and the Elite Eight round is set to start on Sunday, March 29.
The men’s tournament is where fans usually expect to see more upsets occur, and this bracket fulfilled that expectation. There were the usual upsets that are seen on a year-to-year basis, with several eight-seed teams being eliminated and a few seven-seed teams losing in the first round.
The largest of these upsets comes from High Point University, a 12-seed that had a massive win over 5-seed Wisconsin, which was a team in the powerhouse Big Ten conference. The game ended with a last-second shot that led to High Point winning the game by a single point.
Two 11-seeds, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and Texas University, amounted to two upsets over 6-seed teams in the initial round. Texas would then go into the round-of-32 and defeat the 3-seed Virginia. The Longhorns await a game in the elite eight on this crazy run.
VCU and High Point would have their Cinderella story broken in the second round after losing to three and four-seeds.
The one-seeded Florida Gators, last year’s champions, were booted from the tournament after a thrilling loss to Iowa University in the round-of-32. The Big Ten continues to dominate and out of the 16 teams left in the tournament, six of them are in the Big Ten conference.
The first games for the Sweet 16 will begin on Thursday, March 26.
Jacob Enscoe can be contacted at
