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NCAA Tournament Day 1 Guide: Matchup Listing and How to Watch + Megathread

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March Madness is underway and the NCAA Tournament kicks off in earnest today. Here’s how to watch all the day’s games.

By JPinIC
/ new
NCAA Basketball: NCAA Tournament-Orlando Practice
Things get started in earnest today. Time to find a beverage and a TV.
Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

It’s here! The Iowa Hawkeyes are playing in the tournament that really matters, and winning, but it sounds like there might be a few people watching other basketball today and tomorrow. If you haven’t followed Ben’s words of wisdom and found your way to a local watering hole to enjoy a plethora of TVs, fear not. We have your viewing options covered.

The action gets started at 11:15am CT today. Games are spread across TBS, TNT and CBS. Be sure to check your local guides, but for your convenience we’ve got a listing of stations for most of you (for those of you living somewhere other than God’s country, I apologize, I have better things to do than look up your local cable guides - deal with it).

Tournament Channel Breakdown

Station DirecTV Dish Network Mediacom
Station DirecTV Dish Network Mediacom
CBS 2 2 2
TBS 247 139 836
TNT 245 138 835
TruTV 246 242 869

Now that you’ve correctly identified where you can find the respective channels the tournament will be on, here’s your listing of NCAA Tournament games for today.

Thursday, March 16 NCAA Tournament Matchups

Time Matchup TV
Time Matchup TV
11:15 AM 12 Princeton v. 5 Notre Dame CBS
11:40 AM 12 UNC-Wilmington v. 5 Virginia TRU
12:30 PM 13 Winthrop v. 4 Butler TNT
1:00 PM 16 South Dakota State v. 1 Gonzaga TBS
1:45 PM 13 Bucknell v. 4 West Virginia CBS
2:10 PM 13 East Tennessee State v. 4 Florida TRU
3:00 PM 12 Middle Tennessee State v. 5 Minnesota TNT
3:30 PM 9 Vanderbilt v. 8 Northwestern TBS
5:50 PM 11 Xavier v. 6 Maryland TNT
6:10 PM 16 Mt. St. Mary's v. 1 Villanova CBS
6:20 PM 10 VCU v. 7 St. Mary's TBS
6:27 PM 13 Vermont v. 4 Purdue TRU
8:20 PM 14 Florida Gulf Coast v. 3 Florida State TNT
8:40 PM 9 Virginia Tech v. 8 Wisconsin CBS
8:50 PM 15 North Dakota v. 2 Arizona TBS
8:57 PM 12 Nevada v. 5 Iowa State TRU

*All times listed are CT.

You can view the full bracket below. And of course, if you haven’t already done so, you have a few minutes left to complete your bracket and compete against the low-lives fantastic posters of the community as well as the contributors in our March Madness bracket challenge: Black Heart Gold Bracket. A final reminder of what’s at stake:

  • You will get to rub it in the nose of the commentariat and co-workers.
  • We will Tweet nice things about your achievement.
  • Ben will send you a hand-drawn photo of whatever you like via snailmail.

In case you’ve been procrastinating (none of you would ever!), here’s a printable pdf.

Good luck. Enjoy. Play nice in the comments. This will help us pass the time until the real tournament action resumes on Sunday evening.

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