{"id":209007,"date":"2026-03-18T00:03:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T00:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/209007\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T00:03:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T00:03:08","slug":"march-madness-first-four-live-updates-scores-for-howard-vs-umbc-texas-vs-nc-state-as-ncaa-tournament-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/209007\/","title":{"rendered":"March Madness First Four: Live updates, scores for Howard vs. UMBC, Texas vs. NC State as NCAA tournament begins"},"content":{"rendered":"

March Madness<\/a> officially tips off Tuesday evening with the First Four<\/a>, which will determine the last four teams in the 64-team first-round field.<\/p>\n

Starting the night is the UMBC Retrievers (24-8, 14-2) taking on the Howard Bison (23-10, 11-3) in Dayton, Ohio. The winner of UMBC-Howard will take on Michigan in the first round of the tournament. On tap later on Tuesday night is a matchup between the Texas Longhorns (18-14, 9-9) and NC State Wolfpack (20-13, 10-8) as they vie for a chance to play No. 6 seed BYU.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

In case you were wondering, we did, in fact, have AI predict every March Madness game<\/a> \u2026 and our good friend Claude has UMBC and NC State advancing to the first round. UMBC and NC State are both slight 1.5-point favorites ahead of tipoff at BetMGM.<\/p>\n

UMBC vs. Howard start time: 6:40 p.m. ET
TV channel\/live stream: TruTV<\/p>\n

Texas vs. NC State start time: 9:15 p.m. ET
TV channel\/live stream: TruTV<\/p>\n

Follow along with Yahoo Sports for the latest out of the men’s NCAA tournament, tipping off with the First Four on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Live16 updatesTue, March 17, 2026 at 3:43 PM PDT<\/p>\n

Yahoo Sports Staff<\/p>\n

Tue, March 17, 2026 at 4:59 PM PDT<\/p>\n

Yahoo Sports Staff<\/p>\n

We are back for the second half and Howard has taken a double-digit lead right off the bat. We\u2019ll see if UMBC can get back in this thing.<\/p>\n

Tue, March 17, 2026 at 4:40 PM PDT<\/p>\n

Yahoo Sports Staff<\/p>\n

Tue, March 17, 2026 at 4:34 PM PDT<\/p>\n

Yahoo Sports Staff<\/p>\n

The Bison are shooting over 50% from the field against what’s been a stringent UMBC defense this season. Ose Okojie has 16 and Travell Bryson has 11 for the Bison.<\/p>\n

Jah’Likai King has 10 points for the Retrievers, who trailed for the majority of the first half.<\/p>\n

\"NickTue, March 17, 2026 at 4:21 PM PDT<\/p>\n

Nick Bromberg<\/p>\n

This is an uncharacteristically high-scoring half for a UMBC opponent. Howard has six offensive rebounds already.<\/p>\n

Tue, March 17, 2026 at 4:20 PM PDT<\/p>\n

Yahoo Sports Staff<\/p>\n

The Retrievers are hanging around, but they\u2019re going to have to find an answer for Ose Okojie. He has 16 points on 6-of-9 shooting with just over 4 minutes left on the clock.<\/p>\n

Howard is up 39-30.<\/p>\n

Tue, March 17, 2026 at 4:09 PM PDT<\/p>\n

Yahoo Sports Staff<\/p>\n

The Bison are putting in a lot of work at the rim. Big men Cedric Taylor and Ose Okojie have 7 points each and Howard is out-rebounding UMBC 11-7 in the first 12 minutes.<\/p>\n

The Bison have a 28-22 lead with 8 minutes left in the first half.<\/p>\n

Tue, March 17, 2026 at 3:54 PM PDT<\/p>\n

Yahoo Sports Staff<\/p>\n

The Retrievers and Bison have both come out shooting the ball well and have traded leads in the early going. Howard\u2019s Cedric Taylor has six points in the opening minutes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 14-11 Howard at the U-15 TV timeout.<\/p>\n

Tue, March 17, 2026 at 3:49 PM PDT<\/p>\n

Yahoo Sports Staff<\/p>\n

The Bison are slight favorites in the First Four opener (-1.5) and the over\/under is set at 140.5.<\/p>\n

Yahoo Sports analyst Frank Schwab picked every first-round game earlier this week<\/a>. He went with the Retrievers in this one<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tue, March 17, 2026 at 3:42 PM PDT<\/p>\n

Yahoo Sports Staff<\/p>\n

The NCAA tournament has started! Kind of\u2026<\/p>\n

No. 16 seeds UMBC and Howard just tipped and the Retrievers are on the board first.<\/p>\n

Tue, March 17, 2026 at 3:15 PM PDT<\/p>\n

Caroline Fenton, Jason Fitz<\/p>\n

\"JeffTue, March 17, 2026 at 3:00 PM PDT<\/p>\n

Jeff Eisenberg<\/p>\n

NC State coach Will Wade had a great response when reporters asked if he was surprised the committee sent his team to the First Four. Wade said he was \u201cshocked\u201d but also admitted the Wolfpack only have themselves to blame for losing seven of nine entering Selection Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, we did it to ourselves,\u201d Wade said. \u201cI told our guys there\u2019s no victims in the room. We have a Quad 4 loss to Georgia Tech. We didn\u2019t handle business down the stretch. So we\u2019re fortunate to be in.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we didn\u2019t want to be in Dayton, we should have beaten Notre Dame or Stanford. That\u2019s just the way it works.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more from our ranking of every NCAA tournament team, from 1 to 68.<\/a><\/p>\n

Tue, March 17, 2026 at 2:45 PM PDT<\/p>\n

Yahoo Sports Staff<\/p>\n

The UMBC Retrievers faced a slight travel delay on the way to Dayton for Tuesday\u2019s First Four matchup against the Howard Bison, the team\u2019s social media account announced.<\/p>\n

The delays were reportedly due to severe weather, which forced 165 cancellations and delays on more than 235 flights on Monday, CBS reports.<\/a><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t worry, folks. The Retrievers arrived safely as of 5:47 p.m. ET on Monday, per the team\u2019s social media account<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tue, March 17, 2026 at 2:30 PM PDT<\/p>\n

Yahoo Sports Staff<\/p>\n

The men\u2019s and women\u2019s NCAA tournament brackets are set.<\/p>\n

Print yours now.<\/a><\/p>\n

Tue, March 17, 2026 at 2:15 PM PDT<\/p>\n

Yahoo Sports Staff<\/p>\n

Tue, March 17, 2026 at 1:50 PM PDT<\/p>\n

Yahoo Sports Staff<\/p>\n

Michigan, Duke and Arizona lead our annual 1-68 ranking of national championship contenders \u2014 grouped into eight tiers and ordered from most to least likely to snip the nets in Indianapolis on the first Monday in April.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s where each of Tuesday\u2019s First Four teams landed in those rankings:<\/p>\n

40th \u2014 NC State (Tier 6 – Dangerous double-digit seeds)<\/p>\n

43rd \u2014 Texas (Tier 6 – Danger double-digit seeds)<\/p>\n

60th \u2014 UMBC (Tier 8 – The Pushovers)<\/p>\n

65th \u2014 Howard (Tier 8 – The Pushovers)<\/p>\n

Find out where the other teams stand in the ranks.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"March Madness officially tips off Tuesday evening with the First Four, which will determine the last four teams…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[40657,48876,67207,9817,27,29,537,28,82002,82003],"class_list":["post-209007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-howard-bison","tag-march-madness","tag-nc-state","tag-nc-state-wolfpack","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-longhorns","tag-texas-news","tag-umbc-retrievers","tag-umbc-howard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}