Texas guard Tramon Mark can dunk and make jump shots, as he showed Tuesday night against N.C. State. (Press Pros Feature Photos By Julie Wright-Daniel)
Howard and Texas took their opportunities to make lifetime memories and ran with them Tuesday night at the First Four
By Marcus Hartman For Press Pros
Dayton, OH — The first night of the 2026 NCAA Tournament included just about all a basketball fan could want.
Veteran columnist Marcus Hartman writes the Buckeyes and sports at large for Press Pros Magazine.com.
More than 11,000 fans packed UD Arena and saw dunks, 3-pointers, fouls, pep bands, mascots, clutch free throws and even a last-second game-winning shot.
Drama, disappointment and triumph all came and went in the span of a few hours in the grand old barn on the banks of the Great Miami River. 
Dick Vitale and Charles Barkley were even there to do the game broadcast for Turner Sports, which turned out to be fitting because plenty of moments fit Vitale’s catchphrase — “Awesome baby!” — while others were fit to be called “turrible,” one of Barkley’s favorite descriptives.
Senior Texas guard Tramon Mark saved the best for last, rising up for a game-winning jumper from about 17 feet that went through the net for a 68-66 lead for the Longhorns with 1.1 seconds left in their game against N.C. State.
Then it was up to Dailyn Swain, the Texas junior from Columbus, to put the game away by blocking the Wolfpack’s final shot attempt from just inside halfcourt, ending a game that had 38 fouls and more scoring lulls than runs.
(From left) Charles Barkley, Jenny Dell, Dick Vitale and Brian Anderson did the Texas-N.C. State game for TNT Sports.
It wasn’t pretty in the least — Texas shot 36.8% from the game while N.C. State finished at 39% — but Sean Miller was not about to apologize for how it looked.
The coach of the Longhorns was just worried about getting to Portland, Ore., to prepare to face BYU on Thursday.
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“If I evaluated our team’s performance tonight, there’s a lot that we didn’t do well, but there’s also times I’ve been in this tournament with a team that I’ve coached that’s played great and lost,” Miller said. “The difference now is it’s just about one thing: Can you stay in the tournament? Can you advance? The fact that we were able to do it, I’m happy for our team, our program and our university.”
N.C. State made scoring tough for Columbus native Dailyn Swain.
The first night of the tournament also served to show why each team was here — for better or for worse.
In the case of 16 seeds Maryland-Baltimore County and Howard in game one, that was by fighting, scratching and clawing their way to the championships of their respective conference tournaments.
The Retrievers and the Bison won those games to earn their way into the field of 68 even if they still had to win the right to play in the round of 64, and it showed with the way they competed from the opening tip.
In the nightcap, 11th-seeded Texas and North Carolina State gave plenty of examples of why they weren’t placed right into the field of 64 either, but someone had to win.
That turned out to be the Longhorns thanks to Mark, who finished with a team-high 17 points.
Texas C Matas Volkietaitis gets fouled by N.C. State’s Musa Saguna.
“I looked at the clock, and I just sized them up and got a great look at the rim,” he said. “I practice those shots every day, so just got a great look at it.”
His teammates were grateful for his heroics, but they also said they were not surprised.
“I see him make those shots every day in practice, and I seen him hit them in the game, so when he put it up, I crashed the board, but I knew,” said Swain, who scored 13 points and grabbed eight rebounds. “Like that was Tramon Mark, so it’s a good chance it’s going in. He’s a tough-shot maker. That’s what he does.”
Chendall Weaver, a 6-3 guard who came off the bench to scored 11 points and 10 rebounds for his first career double-double, did Swain one better.
He cited first-hand experience of what Mark can do for his confidence when the shot was in the air.
“I guard T-Mark every day, so he makes those shots on me,” Weaver said. “So as soon as it went up, I knew it was going in.”
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In what is more of a make-or-miss-sport than ever before, Miller was just happy to be on the right end of game-winning shot roulette this time.
“As often as is the case in this tournament as I see it, players make plays. We’re here in large part because the guy Tramon Mark made two incredible shots,” Miller said, also referring to another tough look Mark made with 37 seconds to go. “If he didn’t make either of those, one of them, I don’t know if we win.”
Chendal Weaver had a double-double for Texas in the 2026 First Four
While Miller’s mood seemed to be a mix of joy and relief, there was no such ambiguity in Kenneth Blakeney’s reaction to leading Howard, a historically black college in Washington, D.C., with an enrollment of about 11,000, to its first NCAA Tournament win in five tries.
The coach of the Bison has taken them from 4-29 in his first season (2019-20) to winning seasons in four of the last five years. Next up is a date with No. 1 seed Michigan in Philadelphia on Friday, but there was no time to talk about that Tuesday night.
He got choked up Monday talking about director of athletics Kery Davis sticking with him through the rough early going, so it came as little surprise he was emotional in the immediate aftermath of Howard’s 86-83 win over UMBC.
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In fact, Blakeney said he had to turn over postgame speech duties to Bryce Harris, a 6-4, 220-pound senior guard who scored 19 points and pulled down 14 rebounds Tuesday night.
Harris found it ironic this seminal moment in Bison basketball history came against UMBC because he and fellow senior Ose Okojie (23 points Tuesday night) had suffered season-ending injuries against the Retrievers a season ago.
UMBC’s Josh Odunowo gets a hand on a shot attempt by Howard’s Bryce Harris.
“It’s a full-circle moment,” Harris said. “Like you’re playing your first NCAA Tournament game against a team that you got hurt against, you know what I mean? And they fought their butt off. Like they are such a talented team. I feel like we would get to the point where we’d kind of get to push away, and they wouldn’t go away.”
The Bison led by as many as 14 early in the second half, but UMBC cut the lead to 83-81 with 43.2 seconds to go.
Then with the shot clock running down, Harris hit a turnaround jumper that barely moved the net for a four-point lead.
After a UMBC layup, Isaiah Brown made the front end of a one-and-one to extend the lead to three, but the Retrievers’ could not connect on the potential game-tying 3 at the buzzer.
That set off a raucous celebration at midcourt with Howard players surrounding an teary-eyed Blakeney while he did the postgame television interview.
Ose Okojie scored 16 points in the first half to help the Bison to a 49-41 lead.
“I think when we took over the job, I want to say Howard was for like the last 20 years the 354th ranked team in the country,” Blakeney said. “So for me, that was great because there was nothing else to do but go forward and make this team better and make this a better program.”
That of course meant setting goals: Win enough games to be a contender. Contend well enough to be a champion. Then take the opportunity that comes with championships to play on the biggest stage in college basketball.
The Bison did that in 1981, 1992, 2023 and ’24 but came up empty all five times, including a three blowout losses in the first round and a 3-point loss to Wagner in the First Four two years ago.
“As we kind of checked off some of those boxes, obviously advancing in the NCAA Tournament was one of those boxes, as well,” Blakeney said. ” I believe that Howard has a brand that is globally recognized, and what has been done on the academic side with so many wonderful alums going out in the world and contributing so much, I really feel that we can replicate that success on the basketball court.
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“Being on this stage and being able to check those boxes, it’s the only game going on right now, and the whole college basketball world I’m pretty sure was locked in on it. What a wonderful accomplishment.”
For reference, he cited his own college experience as a two-time national champion point guard at Duke.
Howard’s Travelle Bryson came off the bench to score 11 first-half points, helping the Bison to a 49-41 lead.
“I’m having opportunities from 1991 and 1992 at the age of 54 that are still present and presenting themselves daily that being a part of — a small part, a very small part — of a wonderful basketball program that happened to have won two national championships back-to-back years, and I understood that, so when I present opportunities to our players, it’s about how do you brand market and separate yourself from other students at Howard. You do it in the classroom. You do it in the community, and you do it on the court.
“But if you have a chance to win a MEAC conference championship, regular season championship or an NCAA game and advance, there is not going to be an alum in the country that won’t take your phone call. You come to Howard for reasons to try to position yourself for the next 30 to 40 to 50 years of your life and hopefully with our guys, they’re doing that today.”
Not a bad way to start a tournament.
DJ Armstrong Jr. scored 17 points for UMBC against Howard in the 2026 First Four at UD Arena.
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