N.C. university teams may become NCAA Cinderellas

At least two universities in North Carolina are poised to step into the limelight during this year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament as potential “Cinderella teams,” squads that are capable of upsetting higher-ranked teams.

They are High Point University and the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Each team won its respective conference tournament to automatically qualify for “The Big Dance,” and the “bracketologists” are forecasting that High Point and UNCW could each be assigned as 13th seeds in separate regional brackets.

Traditionally, only teams seeded 11th or higher (up to 16th) from the smaller conferences can be categorized as a true Cinderella teams.

This will be the first time ever for the High Point Panthers to be a “March Madness” participant. High Point won the 2025 Big South Conference tournament while compiling an impressive overall record of 29-5. This is a solid team that could fly under the radar and “bust some brackets.”

The Panthers’ coach is Alan Huss (shown below), who is in his second season at High Point. Most recently, Huss spent six seasons as an assistant coach at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. (The Creighton Blue Jays are members of the esteemed Big East Conference.)

 

UNCW made it to “The Big Dance” in 2025 by claiming the Coastal Athletic Association tournament championship, running its overall record to 27-7. Takayo Siddle (shown below) is in his fifth year as head coach of the Seahawks.

 

He previously was an assistant coach at UNCW on the staff of coach Kevin Keatts from 2014-17. When Keatts left Wilmington to take the head coaching job at North Carolina State University in 2017, Siddle opted to move with Keatts to Raleigh, becoming an assistant coach with the Wolfpack.

Siddle returned to Wilmington in 2020 to take the head coaching job with the Seahawks. One sportscaster observed that Siddle’s “coaching philosophy is for his players to play with a fast tempo and to take as many shots as possible.”

In a sense, Siddle has taken a page from the playbook of the legendary coach John Blanche McLendon Jr. (shown below), who in 1940 took the reins of the basketball program at North Carolina Central University in Durham, N.C. He introduced the concept of “constant movement.”

 

Writing for the Bleacher Report, Doug Merlino said: “Coach Mac’s squads (at N.C. Central) constantly pushed up-court on offense. The plan was for a shot to be taken once every eight seconds.”

Coach Mac said he believed his attacking, fast-break style of play was not only more effective at scoring points, but more fun for everyone – the players, coaches and spectators,” Merlino wrote.

“During one game, McLendon’s team ran so much that the referees had to call a timeout in order to catch their breaths,” Merlino added.

Coach McLendon was among the first – and craftiest – to employ the fast break offense, said Ed Miller of The Virginian-Pilot newspaper, based in Norfolk, Va.

Miller commented: “McLendon’s teams ran and pressed so relentlessly that opposing coaches tried to slow them down by tightening the nets so the ball would get stuck in them. McLendon learned to bring a pair of scissors on the road.”

So, it will be great theater to tune in and watch the current crop of UNCW Seahawks attack, attack and attack. If the shots are dropping for them, mayhem could ensue.

 

The 2025 NCAA tournament marks the seventh trip to the NCAAs for UNCW. The Seahawks’ last appearance came in 2017. The team’s tournament record in “The Big Dance” is 1-6. The lone victory came in 2002 when UNCW was seeded 13th and upset the University of Southern California, the 4th seed, in the opening round. 

The New York Times asked veteran sportswriters Jordan Brenner and Peter Keating who they would pick as a premier candidate to become a Cinderella team in the upcoming 2025 NCAA tournament.

They said they have scouted the country to locate “potential Davids with loaded slingshots” just waiting to fire away and to deflect powerful punches from the Goliaths looming at the top of the tournament brackets.

Brenner and Keating said they are guided by analytics provided by Furman University’s Mathematics Department in Greenville, S.C.

They are especially fond of the Troy (Ala.) University Trojans, representing the Sun Belt Conference, as a projected 14th seed. Troy enters the NCAA tournament with an overall record of 23-10.

 

“Every now and then, we will spot a team that excels at certain key aspects of dragon-slaying, almost to the exclusion of doing anything else well,” Brenner and Keating wrote.

“Led by point guard Tayton Conerway, who’s second in the nation with a 5.8% steal percentage, the Trojans play aggressive perimeter defense, force live-ball turnovers on 14% of opponent possessions (ranking seventh), push the ball in transition, hoist 3s on more than 45% of their attempts and crash the boards. Grabbing 39% of their own missed shots, Troy has the fourth-best offensive rebounding percentage in the country; who saw that coming?”

 

“This is a team that knows how to maximize the quantity and value of its scoring opportunities, which is exactly what a David needs to do in a win-or-go-home scenario.”

“This is also a team with serious red flags,” the sports journalists noted. “Troy is sloppy with the ball, committing turnovers on more than 20% of its possessions, absent on the defensive glass and (most times) couldn’t hit an open 3 with a heat-seeking missile if you set the net on fire. But our model has taught us not to overlook the scruffiest of underdogs.”

“Conerway really is someone to watch. And given the right matchup, he and the Trojans could drive a Goliath crazy,” Brenner and Keating concluded.

 

Three other teams capable of making a Cinderella-type fairy tale run through the tournament brackets are Lipscomb University, the University of Nebraska Omaha and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. 

All are dark horses in the eyes of the NCAA selection committee, so they face huge challenges “against all odds” to win their opening round games.

The Lipscomb Bisons of Nashville, Tenn., won the Atlantic Sun Conference tournament while posting a 25-9 overall record. This will be Lipscomb’s second appearance in the NCAA tournament. In 2018, the Bisons dropped a first-round game to the North Carolina Tar Heels by a score of 88-64.

 

The Omaha Mavericks won the Summit League Tournament, and the team enters the NCAA tournament with a 22-12 record. This is Omaha’s “maiden voyage” to The Big Dance.

 

The SIU Edwardsville Cougars – another team making its first appearance as a “March Madness” competitor – posted a 22-11 overall record on its way to winning the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament.