High Point’s Last-Second Jumper Stuns Wisconsin as Panthers Claim First NCAA Tournament Win

PORTLAND, Ore. — Chase Johnston had taken more than 200 shots this season without making a single two-pointer. With 11 seconds left Thursday, the High Point guard finally hit one — and it sent a Big Ten power home.

Johnston’s leaning jumper from inside the arc gave 12th-seeded High Point an 83-82 lead over No. 5 Wisconsin in the first round of the NCAA men’s tournament. On the final possession, forward Terry Anderson jumped a passing lane, picked off a desperate Badgers pass and sprinted the other way as the horn sounded at Moda Center.

In the space of a few seconds, High Point claimed the first NCAA tournament win in program history, handed Wisconsin another early March exit and busted millions of brackets across the country.

The result looked like a familiar March Madness script: a double-digit seed from a one-bid league knocking off a brand-name program in the opening round. But High Point’s rise — fueled by a $170 million arena, an ambitious young coach and a new era of college sports money — shows how far the definition of “mid-major underdog” has shifted since the NCAA’s amateurism model began to crack five years ago.

A classic upset, and a program milestone

High Point, the Big South Conference champion, improved to 31-4 and advanced to face No. 4 seed Arkansas in Saturday’s round of 32. Wisconsin, which came in 24-10 after another strong Big Ten season, became the latest highly seeded favorite to fall victim to the 12-over-5 line.

By mid-afternoon Thursday, more than 25 million entries in ESPN’s bracket game no longer had a chance at perfection. By night’s end, fewer than 1% of submissions remained untouched on the opening day of the men’s tournament.

Oddsmakers had not expected a thriller. Sportsbooks installed Wisconsin as roughly a 10- or 10½-point favorite, with High Point listed around +465 on the moneyline — an implied win probability under 20%. The over/under climbed into the 160s, reflecting the Panthers’ fast pace and top-two national scoring average.

The Badgers led 41-39 at halftime and were still in front in the final minute. High Point, one of the highest-scoring teams in Division I, kept coming, eventually giving the ball to Johnston for the shot that changed the game and the school’s record book.

Johnston, known as a long-range specialist, had gone the entire season without making a two-point field goal, according to game and season statistics shared by fans after the upset. His lone make of the year put High Point ahead for good.

On Wisconsin’s final possession, guard Andrew Rohde tried to thread a pass into the lane. Anderson, who has been a versatile presence all season for the Panthers, read it early, darted in for the steal and held the ball as time expired and High Point’s bench raced onto the court.

The money and momentum behind High Point’s rise

For the Panthers, who did not reach the NCAA tournament until last season, the moment was the culmination of a years-long effort to transform a small private school in High Point, North Carolina, into a nationally relevant basketball program.

The most visible symbol of that push sits on their campus: the Nido and Mariana Qubein Arena and Conference Center, a glass-and-steel building that opened in 2021 with an estimated $170 million price tag. Funded largely by donors and the university’s board, the arena replaced a modest on-campus gym with a modern, multiuse facility that features hospitality suites, practice spaces and year-round event programming.

The arena reflects High Point’s broader strategy under university president Nido Qubein, who has presided over an aggressive expansion of facilities and enrollment. In men’s basketball, those investments laid the groundwork for what has followed.

High Point won its first Big South tournament title and made its first modern NCAA appearance in 2025, finishing 29-6 and tying the conference’s single-season wins record. This season, the Panthers captured a third straight regular-season championship in the Big South, rolled through their conference tournament again and arrived in Portland as one of the country’s most explosive offenses, averaging more than 90 points per game in mid-February.

Much of that on-court identity comes from head coach Flynn Clayman, 37, who was promoted before this season after serving as an assistant under former coach G.G. Smith.

Clayman, a former guard at Colorado State, Troy and the University of the Cumberlands who later played briefly overseas, preaches pace and freedom. High Point runs deep rotations, spreads the floor and encourages three-point shooting. The approach helped make Clayman an early-season “mid-major coach of the week” in one national media poll and has turned the Panthers into a nightly handful for opponents unused to defending 40 minutes of pressure and quick shots.

After Thursday’s upset, Clayman used his television time to challenge power-conference schools that avoid scheduling dangerous mid-majors. He said high-major programs should not shy away from playing teams like High Point in nonconference games and insisted his program belongs in those matchups.

A reshaped rulebook changes what “mid-major” means

Behind the style and the sound bites is a changing financial landscape in college sports that has given schools like High Point new ways to compete.

In 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in NCAA v. Alston that the association’s limits on certain education-related benefits violated antitrust law. In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that “the NCAA’s business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America,” a warning that opened the door to broader challenges.

Shortly after the ruling, the NCAA lifted most restrictions on athletes profiting from their name, image and likeness, clearing the way for endorsement deals and booster-funded “collectives” that pool money and direct it to players. Subsequent legal settlements and policy changes have gone further, allowing schools themselves to share some revenue directly with athletes while leaving collectives in place, as long as deals are tied to promotional activities.

At the same time, a federal executive order in 2025 directed agencies to clarify whether college athletes can be classified as employees under labor and tax laws, raising the possibility that schools may one day have to treat players more like workers than amateurs.

Wealthy private institutions and well-funded public flagships have moved quickly to adapt. For High Point, that has meant combining traditional scholarships with donor-backed NIL opportunities and, increasingly, direct support from the university under new revenue-sharing models. The school does not publish a detailed NIL budget, but its ability to attract transfers from larger conferences and retain productive players in an era of heavy roster movement has drawn attention from coaches and administrators across the Big South.

High Point’s women’s basketball team has also benefited. The Panthers won the Big South women’s tournament this season and earned their own NCAA bid, suggesting that the university’s investments are reshaping more than one program.

Wisconsin’s early exit, and the betting-fueled backdrop

The opponent High Point toppled Thursday comes from the kind of conference that has long defined big-time college basketball. Wisconsin entered this tournament as a familiar March presence. The Badgers had compiled 40 NCAA tournament wins and four Final Four appearances through 2025, built on a reputation for disciplined, slow-paced offense and rugged defense.

This season, Wisconsin finished 22-9 in the regular season and 14-6 in the Big Ten, with multiple victories over top-10 opponents and a mid-20s national ranking in the NCAA’s NET metric. The selection committee slotted the Badgers as a No. 5 seed, a line that has turned into a source of frustration in Madison. With Thursday’s loss, Wisconsin fell to 2-6 all time when seeded fifth, a record that has fed the perception that the Big Ten often stumbles in March despite strong regular seasons and high seeds.

High Point’s win sharpened another emerging question: what, exactly, is a mid-major now?

For decades, the term has described schools from outside the major football conferences, usually with smaller budgets and fewer resources. Their rare tournament upsets, from Richmond over Syracuse in 1991 to Florida Gulf Coast’s “Dunk City” run in 2013, fit a familiar storyline of plucky outsiders toppling the giants.

High Point still plays in a one-bid league and recruits outside the blue-chip ranks. But with a $170 million arena, a growing NIL infrastructure and the ability to offer players a blend of aid, marketing opportunities and direct revenue that some public peers cannot match, the Panthers occupy a different space than most of their conference rivals.

Their rise highlights the possibility of a new divide inside Division I: not simply between power conferences and everyone else, but between schools — in any league — that can marshal significant money for athletics and those that cannot.

It also unfolds against a backdrop of rapidly expanding sports betting. Legalized wagering has turned March into one of the heaviest gambling periods on the calendar. Games like Wisconsin-High Point, with high totals and double-digit point spreads, draw heavy interest in point bets, parlays and live wagering.

On Thursday, bettors who took High Point +10.5 cashed comfortably. Those who grabbed the Panthers’ moneyline, before tipoff or in-game as the underdogs kept pace, won nearly five times their stake. For many fans, High Point’s first appearance on a national stage arrived not through a campus newsletter, but through odds screens and phone alerts.

What’s next

For the players and coaches, the stakes are more straightforward. High Point will return to the Moda Center floor Saturday with a chance to reach the Sweet 16 in just its second NCAA appearance. Wisconsin will head home and begin its offseason, absorbing another painful reminder that in March, reputations and resources only go so far.

The shot Johnston finally made and the pass Anderson intercepted were the kind of plays that have always decided NCAA tournament games. The difference now is what came before them: years of construction, millions of dollars in facilities and a reshaped rulebook that allow a small school with big ambitions to close the gap on a Big Ten opponent — and, for one night at least, to race right past it.