High Point’s upset of No. 5 Wisconsin on March 19, 2026 was the kind of March moment that gets replayed everywhere.
The 12th-seeded Panthers won 83-82 in the NCAA Tournament, and the game ended with Chase Johnston’s first 2-point basket of the season giving High Point the lead in the closing seconds.
That finish alone would have been enough for the highlight reel, but the bigger story came right after the final horn.
Flynn Clayman did not waste the stage. In his postgame comments, he tore into the way mid-majors are treated when it comes to nonconference scheduling.
He said, “Looks pretty obvious to me that high-majors need to play mid-majors during the season. They said we ain’t played nobody—we played somebody now. Nobody would play us.”
He also pointed out that High Point and Miami Ohio had both gone 2-0 in Quad 1 games, while several other strong mid-majors kept getting left out of those chances.
How the March moment turned into a real schedule
That statement spread fast because it landed on a bigger problem in college basketball.
Teams outside the power conferences often have to fight for nonconference games that can help them in the metrics, and Clayman’s frustration matched what many coaches around the sport have been saying for years.
CBS Sports noted that High Point had only gotten a handful of chances to play high-major opponents over the previous three seasons, with the Wisconsin game being the rare exception rather than the rule.
By early May, the first signs of a payoff were already public. High Point announced that Washington State would come to the Qubein Center and called it the first Power Conference team to visit the building.
“Looks pretty obvious to me that high-majors need to play mid-majors during the season. They said we ain’t played nobody—we played somebody now. Nobody would play us. just like nobody would play Miami Ohio. But they gotta play us in this tournament.”
— Matt Norlander (@MattNorlander) March 19, 2026
🗣️🗣️pic.twitter.com/lySuQkyyFk
The school also pushed its 2026-27 basketball season tickets, a reminder that the tournament run and the viral moment had started to spill into next season’s business and basketball plans.
The full shape of the schedule became clearer on May 14. High Point’s nonconference slate already included Liberty on Nov. 2, Washington State on Nov. 7, Saint Louis on Nov. 15, George Mason on Dec. 2, and LSU on Dec. 18.
A neutral-site game against Miami University was still being finalized, and two more games in the Big South/SoCon Challenge were also expected to be part of the mix.
It is exactly the kind of upgrade Clayman was talking about in March. LSU gives High Point a true high-major test. Washington State, Saint Louis, and George Mason are all programs that bring credibility and tournament-level interest.
Even Liberty adds value because it has been one of the more consistent mid-majors in recent years. This is not the profile of a team that got one lucky break and then disappeared; it is the profile of a program using the spotlight to build a stronger path into March.
For High Point, the timing could not be better. The Panthers are coming off one of the biggest wins in school history, and Clayman has turned that into something more useful than a viral clip.
He took a complaint that could have stayed online for a day and used it to push High Point into better games, better exposure, and a better shot at proving itself again before the next NCAA Tournament arrives.
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