March Madness Round of 64 Day 1 All-Tournament Team

Waking up on Day 1 of March Madness is better than waking up on Christmas morning. With 16 games to open the NCAA Tournament, the first day of the 2025 Big Dance did not disappoint. It brought us two double-digit seed mid-major programs pulling big-time upsets, stellar performances in big moments, and – as it always does – it brought us madness. 

Why wait for the tournament, or even the first round to be over to give out superlatives? Out of a crazy first day of basketball, I’m proud to present the Busting Brackets March Madness Round of 64 Day 1 All-Tournament Team: 

Bennett Stirtz was the Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year and an All-American honorable mention, but for many, Thursday night was their first time watching Stirtz and his Drake Bulldogs, and boy did he make a good impression. Stirtz controlled every aspect of the game in Drake’s 11-over-6 upset of Missouri, scoring at will, bailing the slowest-paced team in the country out of late shock clocks against SEC athletes, and always making the right decision with the ball in his hands. 

The Division 2 transfer is a stone-cold killer, and if he can lead Drake past Texas Tech, he’ll be this year’s March Madness superstar. I mean, the dude even broke out the Shabazz Napier one-legged three, what more could you possibly want this time of year?

Since Creighton lost Texas Tech transfer Pop Isaacs back in December, Greg McDermott has been desperate to find a tertiary offensive creator to compliment Steven Ashworth and Ryan Kalkbrenner’s unstoppable pick-and-roll two-man game. It’s taken a while, but senior wing Jamiya Neal has finally developed into that player, and that makes the Bluejays scary in a second-round matchup against Auburn. 

A streaky scorer all season, Neal first showed signs of a breakout with 19 points in Creighton’s Big East Tournament semifinal win over UConn, but he was even better in the first game of the Round of 64 on Thursday afternoon. A creative isolation scorer, Neal did almost all his damage off the bounce, getting to the basket and creating space for his pull-up jumper in the mid-range. Plus he led the team with 12 rebounds and six assists. A comprehensively impressive performance in a hostile environment at Rupp Arena. 

Gonzaga throttled Georgia in the Midwest Region 8/9 matchup. Mark Few’s Zags jumped out to a 27-3 lead, a football score against a football school, and while some of that lead was built with Battle on the bench, the sixth-year senior guard made sure that the other Bulldogs never got back into the game. 

Battle, a sporadic shooter hitting at a 33% clip from three this season, was red-hot on Thursday in Wichita. He went 4/7 from deep, hunting spot-up threes and attacking closeouts. He led the way for the most impressive team on the first day of the 2025 NCAA Tournament and will need another lights-out performance against No. 1 seed Houston in a rare second-round matchup of two top-10 Kenpom teams. Gonzaga has made the Sweet 16 in each of the last nine NCAA Tournaments, and while Battle was the new transfer portal addition this year, he proved to be up to the big moments in the first round.

Brandon Murray began his career with Will Wade at LSU in 2021-22, and when he arrived in Baton Rouge as a four-star prospect, I can’t imagine he envisioned ending his career reunited with Wade on a Cinderella run at McNeese. Well, after playing at four schools in four years, the 6-foot-5 senior who averages 7.1 points a game this season, came off the bench for a crucial 21 points, four rebounds, three assists, and three steals in the Cowboy’s 69-67 upset win over fifth-seeded Clemson. 

Wade has constructed a roster of athletes who do not look like they belong in the Southland Conference. McNeese overwhelmed the Tigers with their length and quickness, taking a 31-13 halftime lead behind 14 first-half points from Murray. The Cowboys nearly let it slip away in the second half, but now get a date with Purdue, a team that’s been all too susceptible to Cinderellas in the past, in the Round of 32. 

If there was a Defensive Player of the Day for Thursday of the NCAA Tournament, it would easily be Jonas Aidoo. The senior transfer who spent the past three seasons entrenched in Rick Barnes’s defensive identity at Tennesse, Aidoo brought that energy to John Calipari’s team in the Razorback’s first-round win over Bill Self’s Kansas Jayhawks. 

The 6-foot-11 center played a staggering 39 minutes, nearly all of them defending three-time All-American center Hunter Dickinson. Aidoo held Dickinson scoreless in the second half and finished with 22 points, five boards, three blocks, and three steals. The senior was also the offensive focal point for Calipari, attacking Dickinson’s drop-coverage off the short roll with a series of mid-range runners and floaters, and spraying the ball out to shooters from the middle of the zone Self dusted off in the second half.