{"id":145519,"date":"2026-03-22T21:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T21:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/145519\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T21:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T21:19:08","slug":"photos-ncaa-march-madness-in-philadelphia-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/145519\/","title":{"rendered":"Photos: NCAA March Madness in Philadelphia 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? <a href=\"#Section1\">Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>March Madness tipped off in Philadelphia this weekend, with two days of tournament games at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.xfinitymobilearena.com\/events\/detail\/2026-ncaa-division-i-mens-basketball-championship\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Xfinity Mobile Arena<\/a>. But for all of the city\u2019s local teams, the run was short-lived, with early exits ending their title hopes.\n<\/p>\n<p>Thousands pack March Madness games in Philadelphia<\/p>\n<p>One of the matchups featured the <a href=\"https:\/\/utsports.com\/sports\/mens-basketball\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">University of Tennessee<\/a> \u2014 an Elite Eight team last year \u2014 taking on <a href=\"https:\/\/miamiredhawks.com\/sports\/mens-basketball\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Miami University (Ohio)<\/a>, a mid-major program that entered the tournament on a 31-game winning streak this season.\n<\/p>\n<p>Nearly 20,000 fans attended Friday\u2019s first session of games, including Miami fan Tiki Wackowski, who painted his entire body red for the RedHawks\u2019 postseason run and said he wouldn\u2019t shower \u201cuntil they lose.\u201d\n  <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s been a long journey for sure,\u201d Wackowski said. \u201cIt\u2019s been inspiring. You talk about an underdog story, how special that is, and I think it\u2019s a testament to the fact that if you believe in yourself, and you believe in a group, anything\u2019s possible.\u201d\n        <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64216,22507,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-145519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-march-madness","tag-ncaa-tournament","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}