2026 March Madness: Top Cinderella teams ready to bust brackets

One of the premier events on the North American sports calendar is the men’s college basketball NCAA Tournament, also known as March Madness.

With 64 teams competing on the official bracket, March Madness is wildly unpredictable, with at least one underdog group going on a Cinderella run every year.

There’s still time to finalize your March Madness brackets, so we’re here to go over a few teams with the potential to go on a Cinderella run.

Let’s get into it.

Cinderella teams

Last year, three double-digit seeds busted brackets with first round wins as No. 11 Drake and 12-seeds McNeese and Colorado State each beat the odds and lasted to the second round.

Even more underdogs triumphed in the first round in 2024, with No. 11 Duquesne, No. 12 Grand Canyon, No. 12 James Madison and No. 13 Yale all moving on.

In 2023, 15th-seeded Princeton went as far as the Sweet 16 and the year before another 15-seed, Saint Peter’s, made it to the Elite Eight.

But, let’s focus on this stat: in three of the last four tournaments, two 12-seeds have upset five seeds in the opening round. So, who will those teams be this year? I have 12-seeds High Point and Akron advancing past Wisconsin and Texas Tech, respectively.

High Point Panthers

The Badgers should be shaking in their boots as they prepare to face a High Point team that has the longest active win streak in the nation at 14 games and the third-highest scoring offence, averaging 90.0 points per game.

The Panthers have elite scorers, led by senior Terry Anderson (16.0 ppg) and they have the second-best turnover margin (plus-7.1 per game) of teams in the tournament.

Akron Zips

Looking at Akron, this is their third straight trip to the Big Dance. The Zips are a veteran group with a ridiculous six players shooting over 34 per cent from three, led by senior Tavari Johnson, who is averaging a team-high 20.1 ppg.

This sets up well for Akron against a Red Raiders team that lost leading scorer JT Toppin to a season-ending ACL injury in February.

Is there one more Cinderella team?

Let’s go big here and take No. 15 Furman to upset No. 2 UConn, the most successful team in the tournament over the last decade.

The Paladins were in a similar spot the last time they were in the tournament in 2023, upsetting No. 3 Virginia in the first round as a 13-seed.

Nothing on paper screams upset in this game, but I’m banking on Furman to take advantage of that and almost lull UConn into a false sense of security.

I expect Furman’s freshman point guard Alex Wilkins to be a big factor as he averages 17.7 ppg and I’m also looking at UConn’s recent play. The Huskies were just crushed by St. John’s in the Big East Tournament and in the past month they’ve lost to inferior opponents like Marquette and Creighton.