The first two rounds of the 2026 NCAA Tournament produced bracket carnage and conference dominance in equal measure, and the numbers that emerged Wednesday tell the story clearly: the Big Ten placed five teams in the Sweet 16, CBS Sports announced its highest first-weekend viewership figures in tournament history, and the ACC — the conference that was supposed to challenge for the title — sent just one team past the second round. Duke, the consensus No. 1 overall seed and home to Naismith Award front-runner Cooper Flagg, is in the Sweet 16 as expected. What was not expected is who is joining them.
Iowa's 74-69 second-round victory over No. 3 seed Florida was the single biggest upset of the opening weekend. The Hawkeyes, an 8 seed, led by just two points entering the final three minutes before Paige Bueckers — in her graduate transfer season from UConn — hit consecutive pull-up jumpers to put the game away. Iowa's head coach Fran McCaffery called it "the best game we've played in my sixteen years here." Florida, which had been projected by most models as a Final Four team, exits with its best regular season record in program history and no hardware to show for it.
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