TL;DR
A 12-seed from North Carolina that had never won an NCAA Tournament game beat Wisconsin 83-82 and busted millions of brackets before the first day was half over.
MSM Perspective
ESPN, CBS Sports, and USA Today all led their tournament coverage with the High Point upset, calling it the defining moment of a chaotic opening day.
X Perspective
March Madness Twitter erupted as High Point's Chase Johnston hit the game-winner, with four double-digit seeds winning on Day One and the 'perfect bracket' dream dying by mid-afternoon.
High Point, a 12-seed from the Big South Conference that had never won an NCAA Tournament game, beat fifth-seeded Wisconsin 83-82 on Thursday in the first major upset of 2026 March Madness. [1] Chase Johnston hit the go-ahead basket in the final seconds to complete a second-half comeback that left Wisconsin's season — and millions of brackets — in ruins. [2]
The upset was the first of four wins by double-digit seeds on Day One, a rate of bracket destruction that had prediction models scrambling by mid-afternoon. [3] VCU also delivered a notable upset, and the day produced the kind of chaos that makes the tournament the single most-watched sporting event of the American spring — even as the other madness escalates.
High Point's student radio broadcasters went viral, their disbelieving screams capturing the purest thing about the tournament: a school nobody picked, a shot nobody expected, and a moment that will define a program for a generation. [4]
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