Every March, folks start talking like Cinderella’s packed up her glass slipper and moved out of college basketball for good. We heard it after last year’s chalky NCAA Tournament, when most of the big dogs held serve and the bracket never really went off the rails. Now, with the 2026 field set and the first round staring us in the face, it’s time to look a little closer at the so-called little guys who still think they’ve got a puncher’s chance. Yeah, NIL money and the transfer portal have tilted the table toward the rich, but that doesn’t mean the mid-majors have stopped showing up for work. If anything, it just makes it that much sweeter when one of these teams clocks in, punches up, and sends a blue blood home early.

Last year, only three double-digit seeds from outside the power structure won a first-round game, and none of them sniffed the Sweet 16, which had everybody writing think pieces about the death of the underdog. But college hoops has a way of humbling anybody who thinks they’ve got it all figured out, and this year’s bracket has a few teams that absolutely did not get the memo that they’re supposed to roll over. You want to talk about blue-collar basketball? Look at the teams that don’t have the glam budgets, don’t get the five-star recruits on autopilot, and still find ways to grind out wins against the flashy brands. Those are the Cinderellas worth circling with a greasy thumb on your bracket printout.

Let’s start with Hofstra, a program that already proved this year it doesn’t spook easy by beating Pitt and Syracuse before most people had even dug their winter coats out of the closet. The Pride don’t play fast, they don’t play wild, and they’re not out there chasing highlight-reel dunks; they slow the game to a crawl and make you guard for a full possession. That deliberate style turns every trip down the floor into a grinder’s shift, and it tends to produce good looks from three, where they’re hitting a rock-solid 36.8% and launching a hefty chunk of their shots. That kind of efficiency is the great equalizer in March, especially when you’re staring down Alabama, a four-seed expected to be without second-leading scorer Aden Holloway after his felony drug charge this week. You never root for trouble off the court, but the reality is losing a key scorer cracks the door open, and a disciplined outfit like Hofstra is exactly the kind of team that likes walking through doors other people leave unlocked.

Then there’s High Point, rolling into the tournament with the nation’s longest winning streak at 14 games and the kind of swagger that comes from knowing you can flat-out fill it up. They’re one of the smallest teams in the field, sure, but they score 90.0 points per game, which means they’re not exactly afraid of a shootout with Wisconsin’s high-octane offense. A year ago they gave Purdue a real game before fading late, and while most of the faces are new, the new group brought something every working stiff appreciates: defensive havoc. This year’s Panthers force 16.4 turnovers per game, good for third in the country, which is another way of saying they live in your jersey and won’t let you breathe. If they can get under Wisconsin’s skin and turn that game into a scrap instead of a clinic, an upset isn’t some fairy tale; it’s just the natural result of 40 minutes of pressure.

South Florida is another outfit people are sleeping on, mostly because they didn’t look like much early in the season while they were still getting used to first-year coach Bryan Hodgson. But once the Bulls got on the same page, they turned into a machine, rolled through the AAC as the clear top dog, and punched their ticket the old-fashioned way with an automatic bid. They’ve got the kind of backcourt that can change a game in a hurry, with guards Wes Enis and Joseph Pinion combining to let fly 18 three-pointers a night. When you’re going up against a three-point-happy Louisville team, that kind of firepower means you’re not just hanging on for dear life; you’re ready to trade blows from the arc. The thing that makes South Florida dangerous, though, is that they actually guard, forcing 14.3 turnovers a game and holding teams to 46.1% inside the arc, which is a fancy way of saying they don’t just hope you miss — they make you uncomfortable.

If you’re the type who likes your Cinderella with a little grit under the fingernails, McNeese might be your team. This group is deep, old, and downright ornery on defense, leading the nation in turnover percentage and turning nearly one out of every four opponent possessions into a mistake. That’s the basketball version of a foreman who never stops watching the clock and the line, because every sloppy pass or lazy dribble gets punished. Vanderbilt’s got an excellent guard combo in Tyler Tanner and Duke Miles and usually takes care of the ball, but the Commodores don’t have the size inside to really bully McNeese in the paint. If Vandy can’t speed the game up and get out in transition, they’re going to get dragged into the kind of low-possession mud fight that McNeese loves, and those games have a funny way of ending with the favorite staring at the floor while the underdog dances.

Now, none of this is a guarantee that any of these teams will go on some wild run to the Elite Eight like Saint Peter’s did back in 2022, when they came one win shy of the Final Four as a 15-seed and made half the country google where the school even was. The transfer portal and NIL money have absolutely made it tougher for mid-majors to keep star players and build long-term cores; that’s just being honest about where the sport is. But it hasn’t killed off the dream, it’s just raised the degree of difficulty, the way a tougher foreman raises the standard on the line. When these programs get a shot on the big stage and land a punch, it’s not some fluke of destiny; it’s usually the result of veteran guys who’ve been together, play with chip-on-the-shoulder toughness, and aren’t intimidated by a fancy logo on the other team’s jersey. If the little guys do break through this year, we ought to appreciate it even more, because in this climate it means they’ve outworked the system as much as they’ve outplayed the opponent.

From a fan’s perspective, especially if you’re filling out a bracket after a long shift or between kids’ activities, the trick is balancing your heart and your head. You don’t want to turn your sheet into a fairy-tale novel where every double-digit seed is cutting down nets, but you also don’t want to play it so safe that you miss the one or two underdogs that actually have the tools to win. Hofstra’s slow tempo and three-point shooting, High Point’s turnover-happy pressure, South Florida’s two-way backcourt, and McNeese’s grinding defense are all real, tangible edges, not just wishful thinking. If you’re going to roll the dice on an upset, those are the kinds of traits you circle, same way you’d circle the hardest-working guy on the crew when things get tight. At the end of the day, Cinderella isn’t about magic; it’s about a team that shows up ready to work while everybody else assumes the job’s already done.

So as you ink in your picks and talk yourself into or out of these Cinderellas, remember that the gap between the haves and have-nots may have grown, but it hasn’t become a brick wall yet. There’s still room in March for a team without a giant budget, a top-10 recruiting class, or a household-name coach to throw a wrench into the machine. If one of these underdogs — or some other double-digit seed we haven’t even mentioned — strings together a couple wins, don’t act surprised; just tip your cap to a group that punched above its weight and made the most of its shot. That’s the kind of story that keeps March Madness from turning into just another made-for-TV product, and it’s why people like me keep coming back to the bracket table every year, pen in hand and hope in the margins. Because for all the money and the hype and the changing landscape, there’s still something deeply satisfying about watching the little guy get a fair bounce and maybe, just maybe, crash the party.