Wisconsin’s path in the NCAA Tournament has been laid out.
Following a 24-10 regular season the Badgers were put in the West Region as the No. 5 seed and will face 12th-seeded High Point on Thursday in Portland, Oregon.
Got our dancing shoes ready pic.twitter.com/3Tq7yzacAt
— Wisconsin Basketball (@BadgerMBB) March 15, 2026
It will be the first ever matchup between Wisconsin and the Panthers, which won the Big South Conference to claim their second-straight trip to the NCAA Tournament. High Point went 30-4 overall and have won 14 straight games against a schedule that KenPom ranks 342nd in the country. The Panthers didn’t play a single Quad 1 team and lost both of its game against Quad 2 teams — UAB and Appalachian State, while going 5-2 against Quad 3 and 22-0 against the bottom of college basketball.
The game features two of the high-scoring offenses in the country. High Point put up 90.0 points per game, just behind national leaders Alabama and Miami (Ohio), while the Badgers ranked 30th in the country at 83.5 per game. The Panthers are led by forward senior forward Terry Anderson, who is No. 1 on the team in scoring (16.0) and second in rebounding (6.0). Senior guard Rob Martin puts up 15.3 points and 3.7 assists per game, while senior forward Cam’Ron Fletcher averages 12.7 points and 6.9 rebounds.
In their lone previous excursion in the NCAA Tournament, the Panthers were the No. 13 seed last year and fell 75-63 to fourth-seeded Purdue.
Wisconsin will be looking to avoid its fate the last two times it was a No. 5 seed. Two years ago, the Badgers got run off the court by James Madison in Brooklyn. That came four years after 12th-seeded Oregon picked Wisconsin apart in the final game of Ethan Happ’s career in San Jose. Overall, the Badgers are 2-3 in the first round as a No. 5 seed.
But this Wisconsin team is playing some of its best basketball of the season, coming up just short of a third-straight rip to the Big Ten Tournament title game. Led by Nick Boyd (20.6 ppg) and John Blackwell (19.0 ppg), the Badgers have one of the best scoring backcourts in the country to go along with a total of five players shooting better than 35.4-percent from 3-point range.
The one question Wisconsin is managing is the health of starting forward Nolan Winter. He left the second-to-last game of the year with an ankle injury and did not play in the Big Ten Tournament. The junior told reporters on Saturday that he expected to play in the NCAAs but he appeared to still be pretty hobbled while walking around the United Center.
The winner of Thursday’s game will get either fourth-seeded Arkansas or 13th-seeded Hawaii on Saturday.
