Top seeds are big favorites to
start March Madness. It could be tricky for fans to spot an upstart
[March 19, 2026]
By AARON BEARD
GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) — Illinois' Brad Underwood knows all about the
traps awaiting a favored team in March Madness. He remembers
springing two himself as a double-digit seed while coaching Stephen
F. Austin.
“It’s what we talk about all year,” Underwood said before the
third-seeded Illini faced 14th-seeded Penn in the first round of the
NCAA Tournament. “It’s not just getting in the tournament, but the
margins are very small. Every team here is great.”
Lower-seeded teams have long filled March with shocking upsets to
earn the almost honorary title of Cinderella. And years of
tournament reels have proven anything can happen, particularly with
top teams often leaning on younger high-end NBA prospects against
older and more experienced teams.
But this year, fans looking to identify the most likely upsets won't
have an easy time picking them in the first round of the NCAA
bracket, not with big point spreads for the first-round favorites
Thursday and Friday.
And that comes after a chalky year i n which all four No. 1 seeds
reached the Final Four for just the second time since seeding began
in 1979.
Big gaps
For example, two of the No. 5 region seeds — Wisconsin in the West,
Vanderbilt in the South — were favored by at least 10 1/2 points on
BetMGM Sportsbook as of early Thursday, coming in the 5-versus-12
matchups considered prime territory for first-round upsets.
Region 4-seeds Nebraska (versus Troy), Kansas (Cal Baptist) and
Arkansas (Hawaii) were all picked by at least 13 1/2.
Midwest No. 6 seed Tennessee was set as an 11 1/2-point favorite on
Miami (Ohio) after the RedHawks' First Four win against SMU on
Wednesday.
And that's before getting to the massive spreads for No. 1 seeds
like reigning national champion Florida (35 1/2 against Prairie View
A&M) and Michigan (30 1/2 against Howard), or 2-seeds like Purdue
(25 1/2 against Queens) and Iowa State (24 1/2 against Tennessee
Tech).
For those top teams, the mission is to handle these games as
efficiently as they have just about everything else all year.
“Every team is good here, so we are not thinking about the favorites
to win the game,” big man Aday Mara said from top-seeded Michigan.
“We are just thinking about if you lose the game, you go home.”
Getting ready
The 2025 tournament that saw Florida, Houston, Auburn and Duke reach
the Final Four joined the 2008 finale as the only years with every
1-seed reaching the season's final weekend.
Yet only two years earlier, UConn won its first of two straight
national titles in an unusual Final Four that was part of what had
been a more volatile first four tournaments since the COVID-19
pandemic. In 2023, no 1-, 2- or 3-seed in the national semifinals
for the first time since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985
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Duke guard Cayden Boozer (2) passes the ball around Virginia guard
Malik Thomas, left, during the first half of an NCAA college
basketball game in the championship of the Atlantic Coast Conference
tournament in Charlotte, N.C., Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP
Photo/Nell Redmond)
Player movement through the transfer portal had
seemingly scattered experienced talent across the country to create
the potential for more of those March moments. Yet the arrival of
the revenue-sharing era allowing schools to pay athletes directly
beyond what they could earn for use of their name, image and
likeness (NIL). And that's driving more talent to top programs that
can pay for it, whether in poaching the mid-major ranks or snagging
a player from a peer league.
Where does that leave the upstarts?
“So much of this is a mindset and a look and an approach, the rest
follows suit," Hawaii coach Eran Ganot said. "If you don’t have that
mindset, you’re cooked. It’s with great humility and great respect.
“Whatever name popped up, we were going to play a
championship-caliber program that’s won a lot of games. We don’t try
to outsmart ourselves. We don’t scoreboard watch, who do we want to
play, who we don’t want to play. It’s a bring-it-on mentality,
understanding it’s going to be difficult. That’s kind of been our
deal all year.”
Upset triggers?
Still, there are variables that can create opportunities for
surprises.
Injuries have already played a big role in limiting the upside of
some teams, such as South 6-seed North Carolina having lost
Associated Press second-team All-American Caleb Wilson to a
late-season thumb injury. Or West 6-seed BYU losing No. 3 scorer
Richie Saunders to a season-ending knee injury in February, increase
the load on star freshman and AP first-team all-American AJ Dybantsa.
And there are other variables, such as Midwest 4-seed Alabama seeing
No. 2 scorer Aden Holloway being indefinitely suspended after his
Monday arrest on a felony drug charge.
Or there's simply the challenge for favorites like No. 1 overall
tournament seed Duke and fellow 1-seed Arizona playing in the
sport's brightest spotlight while leaning on young talent.
The oddsmakers like their chances.
But March Madness has earned that moniker for a reason, too.
“I think the biggest thing is just understanding that these games
have a higher stake,” Blue Devils freshman point guard Cayden Boozer
said.
“If we don’t show up the right way, we’re going to lose, we’re going
to go home and we’re not going to achieve what we want to do.”
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