McNeese and Drake notched the first major upsets of the NCAA Tournament on Thursday while Purdue shook off its late-season slide.
March Madness is officially here! With all due respect to the First Four opening round, there’s simply nothing in sports like the first Thursday of the NCAA Tournament.
While the first tips always feel like Christmas morning in March, Thursday’s early games didn’t provide much magic — that is, until Will Wade and his 12-seed McNeese Cowboys sent 5-seed Clemson packing in the tourney’s first major upset. (Tip of the cap to Creighton for its 89-75 rout of Louisville, but we don’t consider the 9-over-8 result much of an upset around these parts.)
As for the top seeds, Auburn and Houston decimated their respective 16-seed opponents in Alabama State and SIUE. ASU had the Tigers looking shaky for the first 18 and a half minutes, but the 10-point lead Auburn built just before the break stretched out to 83-63 by the final horn. The Coogs, meanwhile, jumped on the OVC champs early and never looked back in their 78-40 romp.
As for the rest of the action from the best day in sports, below are a few of our team’s top takeaways from Thursday.
More Heat Check CBB:
- Best/worst-case scenario for top seeds
- 25 players who will shape the tournament
- Stat Pack: Stats, trends for first-round matchups
McNeese steamrolls Clemson early despite Will Wade’s impending exit
Clemson won a program-record 27 games this season with physical defense, maniacal effort on the glass and efficient shot-making. That formula proved nearly unstoppable in the ACC, making its performance against McNeese downright inexplicable. The Tigers looked overmatched from the jump, as the Southland champs shook off a size disadvantage, forced tough shots with a matchup zone and beat Clemson in every “toughness” category (44–24 in paint points, 18–13 in offensive rebounds, 6–0 in blocks).
The Tigers trailed at halftime 31-13, the fewest first-half points of any top-5 seed since 1999 (Wisconsin). Read that again. THE LAST TIME THIS HAPPENED, THE BACKSTREET BOYS WERE TOPPING THE CHARTS WITH MILLENIUM. And boy, did the Cowboys look larger than life. While the Tigers had a late flurry to doll up the score, the outcome was never in doubt. The effort, the attention to detail, the execution — Clemson will want to forget it all.
“I didn’t do a very good job with my guys, and we weren’t really prepared for the zone to man. Haven’t seen a lot of that this year,” Clemson coach Brad Brownell said after the game. “I thought their athleticism inside and their quickness certainly was a factor. The offensive rebounds they got, extra possessions really helped them.”
McNeese wasn’t supposed to do this. Its coach, Will Wade, has reportedly agreed to be the next head coach of NC State. Yet, one would never know he has a foot out the door. The Cowboys’ Christian Shumate was critical, crashing the boards and forcing turnovers. He out-hustled the bigger Clemson frontline, fighting for rebounds and 50-50 balls and blocking a pair of shots. Shumate and do-everything guard Quadir Copeland (16 points, seven rebounds, five assists, two steals) aim to replicate this formula Saturday against Purdue. —Riley Davis
Bennett Stirtz and Drake taking D-II to Round 2
This Drake team looks like it could be a lot of fun this March — and it also looks a lot like Ben McCollum’s previous squad at Division II outfit Northwest Missouri State. McCollum, the Bulldogs’ first-year coach, brought over four players from NMSU to start for him in Des Moines. None of the four has been more important as Bennett Stirtz, and he showed it again on Thursday night.
Stirtz, the reigning Missouri Valley Conference Larry Bird Player of the Year, had a bit of Larry Legend in him against Missouri. Midway through the second half, the 6-seed Tigers were clawing their way back into the game after trailing by as many as 15. When Mizzou hit a three to bring the deficit to single digits, Stirtz promptly answered by cashing one of his own — off one leg, no less. When the Tigers later brought the game to within a single point, Stirtz hit a jumper on the ensuing possession that keyed a game-deciding 7-0 run for Drake. The Tigers never got back within one score, and Drake goes on to face 3-seed Texas Tech on Saturday.
As he did all year, Stirtz led the Bulldogs in scoring with 21 points on 8-of-11 shooting, including a perfect 3-of-3 from downtown. He also tied with Kael Combs for a team-leading four assists, and he joined fellow NMSU import Mitch Mascari in playing all 40 minutes. Stirtz is not the most animated player in the world, but he is unquestionably the face of what could be wind up being this season’s biggest Cinderella story. An 11-seed just made the Final Four last year (NC State), and three of the six to ever do it hailed from mid-major leagues (2008 George Mason, 2011 VCU, 2018 Loyola Chicago). Could Drake be next? —Andy Dieckhoff
Purdue rights the ship, holds off High Point
Purdue entered the Big Dance as one of the trendier first-round upset candidates. After all, the Boilermakers had lost six of nine games heading into its Thursday matchup against the 13th-seeded Panthers of High Point.
Matt Painter’s squad had surrendered the third-worst 2-point percentage defense in all of college basketball since New Year’s Day, failing to hold an opponent under one point per possession since Feb. 7. And while Purdue still allowed High Point to convert 52 percent of its 2-point tries, the Boilers had far more resistance on the defensive end than at any point over the prior three weeks.
Purdue’s effort on the boards was a difference-maker. Facing off against High Point’s Juslin Bodo Bodo — a 7-footer who leads the nation in offensive rebounding rate — the Boilers clearly prioritized the importance of winning the rebounding battle. Purdue’s 45 team rebounds and 19 offensive boards were both season-highs, ultimately keeping HPU at a distance even when the Panthers went on spurts.
As for the offensive end, Braden Smith and Trey Kaufman-Renn predictably led the way with 41 of Purdue’s 75 points. But it was the contributions from Cam Heide, Myles Colvin and Will Berg that shifted the game in the favor of the Boilermakers.
Myles Colvin and Cam Heide!
— Heat Check CBB (@HeatCheckCBB) March 20, 2025
A pair of putback jams give Purdue its largest lead of the day. pic.twitter.com/aBXy1RsGsi
“He’s had some games where he’s really given us a spark off the bench,” Painter said of Heide. “You’re not going to always be consistent scoring coming off the bench. But you can be consistent rebounding, and you can be consistent defensively, and he gave us that spark tonight.” —Eli Boettger
Postseason woes continue for Kansas
A once-promising season for Kansas drew to an unceremonious close Thursday with a 79-72 loss to Arkansas. The preseason No. 1 for the second straight year, Bill Self’s squad progressively declined as the season went along. Kansas picked up substantial November victories against Duke, Michigan State and North Carolina, but fell from its perch after an 0-2 December road trip to Creighton and Missouri.
Ultimately, it became a microcosm of the Jayhawks’ season. Kansas was the No. 11 team this year in home games but just No. 29 in away/neutral matchups. The diminished offense away from Allen Fieldhouse was especially noticeable, ranking just 111th in efficiency compared to 13th at home.
Kansas’ offense screeched to halt at the biggest moments this year, and Thursday was no different. Winning 67-64 with under five minutes to go, Kansas proceeded to turn the ball over six times and attempted four shots the rest of the way — three of which were in the final 26 seconds. The five Jayhawk starters — all upperclassmen — combined for 14 turnovers.
“This year, our roster was good enough to be competitive, but it probably wasn’t the roster it needed to be to be talked about in a way that the best teams in America are talked about,” Self said in the postgame.
It’s the first time since 1998-2000 that Kansas has failed to reach three consecutive Sweet 16s. The last two Jayhawk teams entered the year as preseason No. 1 only to bow out with a whimper. Last season’s team eked past 13-seed Samford before getting torched by Gonzaga in a 21-point romp.
Self and his staff have work to do in the transfer portal if they hope to prevent the lapses that have plagued each of the last three Jayhawk teams. —Eli Boettger
Major coaching matchups set for Saturday’s second round
While the NCAA Tournament is best remembered for what the players do on the court, it’s hard to ignore the allure of an all-timer coaching matchup. And we’ll have a few whoppers on Saturday
Officially, Rick Pitino and John Calipari have over 1,500 combined wins, nine Final Fours and two national championships. (Unofficially, add another 165 wins, four Final Fours and a national title that the NCAA later vacated.) The 7-vs.-10 game was always going to produce a coaching legend, but Coach Cal’s Arkansas prevailed over Bill Self and Kansas. The only question was Pitino, but St. John’s eventually put away Omaha after a slow start. Get ready for an electric battle in Providence.
Meanwhile, two members of the 700-win club will be going toe-to-toe in Wichita for a spot in the Midwest Regional semifinal. Houston’s destruction of SIUE was the 794th win in the illustrious career of Kelvin Sampson, who has two Final Fours to his name but is still searching for that elusive national championship. Gonzaga’s Mark Few is in a similar boat. The Zags’ skipper has led the program to the precipice of greatness, going as far as the 2021 title game, but is still looking for the big one.
Elsewhere in the Midwest, Rick Barnes notched career win No. 834 as 2-seed Tennessee topped 15-seed Wofford. Now, Barnes will battle wits with a relative newcomer to the guild of coaching legends: UCLA’s Mick Cronin, the youngest active coach with 500 wins, whose Bruins routed Utah State.
Finally, don’t overlook Bruce Pearl and Greg McDermott in the South after Auburn and Creighton won their respective matchups with Alabama State and Louisville. In terms of Division I wins, both will follow Cronin to the 500-win club in the very near future. —Andy Dieckhoff