The 2026 NCAA Tournament begins on Tuesday in Dayton, Ohio, with two First Four matchups. The opening game of March Madness features No. 16 seed UMBC facing No. 16 seed Howard with the winner set to meet No. 1 seed Michigan on Thursday. The last time UMBC was in the tournament, it pulled off the biggest upset — at the time — in the history of the Big Dance as the No. 16 seed Retrievers stunned No. 1 seed Virginia.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The second matchup of the doubleheader features No. 11 Texas facing No. 11 NC State. This game is a rematch of a game from the opening month of the season at the Maui Invitational. In that first meeting, Texas beat NC State 102-97 in the fifth-place game of the tournament.<\/p>\n
Fill out your brackets<\/a>\u00a0now and enter them into our Bracket Challenge for your chance to win a dream trip to the 2027 Final Four\u24c7.<\/p>\n Texas and NC State are both led by first-year coaches. NC State coach Will Wade is making his return to the NCAA Tournament after guiding McNeese to an appearance in the second round of last year’s Big Dance. Sean Miller, meanwhile, has Texas vying for a spot in the first round in his first season leading the Longhorns.<\/p>\n First Four schedule, scores<\/p>\n Tuesday, March 17<\/p>\n (16) UMBC vs. (16) Howard — 6:40 p.m. | truTV (watch live<\/a>)(11) Texas vs. (11) NC State — 9:15 p.m. | truTV (watch live<\/a>)<\/p>\n CBS Sports will be with you the entire way updating this story with the latest from every First Four game on Tuesday. Keep it locked here for scores, analysis and highlights throughout the evening. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2026 NCAA Tournament begins on Tuesday in Dayton, Ohio, with two First Four matchups. The opening game…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,8138,2001,217,9625,65457,10454,9439,7456,10936,231,772,1400,1544,276,2098,84986],"class_list":["post-663813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-bracket","tag-charles-barkley","tag-college-basketball","tag-dick-vitale","tag-dickie-v","tag-howard","tag-live-updates","tag-march-madness","tag-nc-state","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaa-tournament","tag-ncaab","tag-scores","tag-texas","tag-umbc"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116247154386899021","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}