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.
Nebraska's run is perhaps the more improbable story. The Cornhuskers, who spent most of the last decade as the conference's doormat, entered as a 10 seed after winning the Big Ten Tournament in dramatic fashion — their first conference tournament title since 1994. They dispatched No. 7 seed Xavier in the first round and then survived a frantic 81-79 overtime game against No. 2 seed Marquette on Sunday. Their point guard, freshman Trey Coleman, who was a consensus top-5 NBA draft pick before he ever played a college game, scored 29 points and had 8 assists in the Marquette game — a performance that has accelerated his draft stock to the point where CBS Sports' Gary Parrish projected him as the No. 1 overall pick on Monday.
