There are few days more exciting on the sports calendar in a given year, than the first Thursday of the NCAA Tournament, which ushers in four straight days of wall-to-wall hoops from lunchtime on the East Coast until well after midnight. Fans can grab a few hours of sleep in the early morning hours — assuming the adrenaline has adequately worn off — and prepare themselves for more of the same as the Big Dance narrows from 64 teams to 16 teams by the end of the weekend.
Along the way, FOX Sports will be tracking some of the biggest storylines from each day: the breakout performances, the pulsating upsets, the buzzer-beaters that are sure to be included in “One Shining Moment” when the tournament concludes in early April. We’ll dive into those topics in a bit more detail here.
[MORE: 2025 March Madness live updates, scores]
Follow along for the ride:
The latest batch of headlines surrounding Will Wade, the former LSU head coach who was fired amid an NCAA investigation into recruiting violations three years ago, originated on Wednesday afternoon in Providence. It was there that word began to trickle out regarding Wade’s coaching future, even as his McNeese team was roughly 24 hours from an opening-round NCAA Tournament matchup against No. 5 Clemson. By dinner time, word had broke that Wade reached an agreement to become the head coach at NC State once his current March Madness run concludes, however long that might be. And based on the way McNeese performed during a stunning 69-67 upset of the Tigers on Thursday, it seems like Wade is destined to stick around a while longer.
In their second consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance, the Cowboys stormed to an 18-point first-half lead over Clemson, bludgeoning the ACC’s second-best team for 26 points in the paint and “junking up the game” with a matchup zone defense they hadn’t used much this season, according to an in-game interview with Wade. The efficiency McNeese displayed in shooting 43.8% from the field in the opening stanza was juxtaposed by hideous execution from the Tigers, who only managed three field goals in the first 12 minutes while turning the ball over six times during that stretch. Head coach Brad Brownell finally saw enough when a high-flying put-back jam from Christian Shumate brought the crowd to life, capping a run in which McNeese out-rebounded Clemson 12-1, prompting the Tigers to call timeout. The margin at halftime was 31-13 in favor of McNeese, with Clemson’s two leading scorers — Chase Hunter and Ian Schieffelin — combining for zero points.
Any kind of second-half run that fans might have expected from a Clemson team that earned a season-defining win over Duke in early February and is ranked No. 19 in the country by KenPom only happened in the absolute final moments. McNeese’s lead actually swelled from 17 at the 18:08 mark, when Shumate flipped home a basket, to 22 at the 8:07 mark, when a corner 3-pointer from Brandon Murray forced Brownell to call another timeout as the game inched closer and closer to finality. By then, the Cowboys had doubled up Clemson, 32-16, for points in the paint and had a 27-2 advantage in bench points. They were still out-rebounding the significantly taller Tigers by 10 at the under-8 media stoppage.
The last few minutes dragged on for ages as Clemson intelligently pressed the Cowboys into one mistake after another, momentarily threatening to cobble together an all-time comeback. But McNeese turned a pair of press breaks into eye-catching dunks that nudged Wade’s team in front for good. The Cowboys advance to play fourth-seeded Purdue, which pulled away from High Point for a 75-63 victory earlier in the day.
The result prolonged what was already a wince-inducing afternoon for the ACC, which saw Louisville get obliterated by Creighton to open first-round action. All season, the ACC was maligned and criticized for being arguably the weakest power league in the country. Aside from Duke, many analysts wondered, which teams from the league were actually good? The answer, it appears, might be none of them, with the Cardinals and Tigers both falling within the first few hours of the tournament. And while it’s true that 11-seed North Carolina is still alive thanks to a First Four victory over San Diego State on Tuesday night, the Tar Heels’ inclusion in the field was generally viewed as a mistake from the outset. It seems clear that Duke remains the ACC’s only true hope for a deep NCAA Tournament run.
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When the bracket was released on Sunday evening, one of the early pairings that raised eyebrows across the sport was a matchup between No. 8 Louisville and No. 9 Creighton. Not only was this game going to be played in Lexington, Kentucky, which seemed to give the Cardinals a built-in advantage in their home state, but it also represented a significant discrepancy between what the selection committee thought of Louisville and the perception of head coach Pat Kelsey’s team among the general public.
The Cardinals had quickly become one of the best stories in college basketball in their first season under Kelsey, formerly of Charleston. They finished the regular season 27-7 overall (18-2 in the ACC) after winning just 12 games over the previous two campaigns combined. And their run to the championship game of the ACC Tournament last weekend seemed to suggest that Louisville was playing excellent basketball at the right time, even if Kelsey’s team was ultimately upended by Duke. It was a résumé that led most folks to assume the Cardinals would be seeded anywhere on the 4-, 5-, or 6-line in the Big Dance. That they ended up as an 8-seed in the South was a legitimate surprise, as evidenced by Kelsey’s reaction on live television when the bracket was announced.
But the nature of Thursday’s first-round matchup with Creighton, which dismissed the Cardinals, 89-75, in a game that was never all that close, suggests the selection committee got the seeding right, maintaining the appropriate skepticism about subpar competition in the ACC. Not even an overwhelmingly pro-Louisville crowd, which made this tournament opener sound like a bonafide Cardinals’ home game, was enough to narrow what became a clear imbalance between the teams.
Fresh off a trip to the Big East Tournament title game, the Bluejays unleashed a barrage of 3-pointers that extended an early lead to 20 in the waning seconds of the first half. Point guard Steven Ashworth buried four of them on eight attempts. Small forward Jackson McAndrew connected on three of his seven tries. Shooting guard Jamiya Neal, who scored a career-high 29 points and grabbed 12 rebounds, chipped in two 3s of his own. As a team, Creighton shot 11-of-24 from beyond the arc to finish plus-9 compared to the Cardinals, who were forced to chase for much of the game but never got within single digits in the second half. The best efforts of point guard Chucky Hepburn (22 points) and Terrence Edwards Jr. (21 points) weren’t enough to offset an otherwise cold shooting night for Louisville from beyond the arc (8-of-29, 27.6%).
With the win, Creighton advances to the Round of 32 for a potential matchup with No. 1 overall seed Auburn on Saturday.
Michael Cohen covers college football and college basketball for FOX Sports. Follow him on Twitter @Michael_Cohen13.
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