March Madness 2026: Breaking down the bubble teams ahead of Selection Sunday

The 2026 NCAA tournament bracket will arrive in just a few hours. For now, all attention turns to the bubble, where teams either still find themselves playing for an automatic bid or waiting to see if their body of work is deserving of an at-large selection to March Madness.

With conference tournaments wrapping up and Selection Sunday upon us, Yahoo Sports is breaking down this year’s remaining bubble teams.

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NOTE: KenPom rankings are updated as of 9 p.m. ET on Saturday, March 14, and all NCAA WAB and NET rankings and team stats are updated through games played on March 13.

Miami (Ohio)

Record: 31-1 (18-0 MAC)

KenPom ranking: 93

WAB ranking: 38

NET ranking: 64

The RedHawks should be in, even after falling to UMass in the MAC tournament quarterfinals. They’re the first team to author a perfect regular season since 2020-21 Gonzaga, and, perhaps more importantly, they’re top 40 in the significant “Wins Above Bubble” (WAB) metric. A tool to help mitigate strength of schedule discrepancies, WAB measures a team’s total number of victories against how many wins the average bubble team would be expected to tally when faced with the same schedule.

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NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt told CBS Sports that last year’s selection of the final at-large teams to make the 68-team field was “probably more highly correlated” to a team’s WAB ranking than its NET ranking, a metric that takes opponent quality, efficiency of performance and game location into consideration. KenPom ranks Miami just 93rd, but an eligible one-loss team has never missed the modern NCAA tournament, according to ESPN. A 31-1 record and a top-40 WAB ranking will likely send the RedHawks to the dance and give the MAC multiple bids for the first time since 1998-99.

Peter Suder is the MAC Player of the Year. He leads a group of six RedHawks players averaging double-digit scoring figures. (Photo by Dylan Buell/Getty Images)

(Dylan Buell via Getty Images)

Missouri

Record: 20-12 (10-8 SEC)

KenPom…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/mens-college-basketball/article/march-madness-2026-breaking-down-the-bubble-teams-ahead-of-selection-sunday-020439816.html

Author : Andy Backstrom

Publish date : 2026-03-15 02:04:00

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