How do teams get picked for the NCAA tournament?

It’s NCAA Tournament time, and here on Selection Sunday, we’re preparing to crowd around a television and learn the fate of our favorite college teams. It’s a day of stress, happiness, and bracket planning. There’s a lot to unpack. But before we dive into who’s in and who’s out, let’s first understand how this tournament actually works.

We’ll start simple. A total of 68 teams make the men’s tournament. Thirty-two of those teams punched their ticket by way of winning their conference tournament, and 36 more are selected by the committee. We call those selections the “at-large” bids to the tourney.

By beating out every team in their path in a conference tournament, schools earn an automatic bid to the big dance. All they’ve secured is a spot though, and that might not necessarily mean a good one.

This year’s NCAA tournament selection committee is made up of 10 members: the director of athletics from Kentucky, Duke, UNC Asheville, the commissioners of the Atlantic 10, Southland and Mountain West Conference, the vice president for intercollegiate athletics at Bradley, and the vice president for athletics and recreation from Northwestern.

Because conference tournaments last through Sunday morning, they’re in constant discussion until just hours before the bracket is released.

Slow down there, conspiracy theorist. Each committee member is assigned their own conferences to monitor throughout the season, and they aren’t given the one their team plays in. Conference commissioners aren’t allowed to participate in the vote for any teams in their own conference when it comes time for seeding, and school representatives can not vote on their own teams.

Nope!

A ton of smart nerdy math metrics flood the minds of committee members as they decide which teams will get the final bids to the tournament.

RPI (ratings percentage index) is a big one. That metric factors in three things: winning percentage against D1 teams (25 percent), opponents’ winning percentage (25 percent) and opponents’ opponents winning percentage (25 percent).

But there are SO many other factors involved. The NCAA lists a few things, including their own evaluations from watching teams, strength of schedule, head-to-head results, road records, key player injuries, imbalanced conference schedules, and on and on and on.

Yep, even more smart nerdy metrics are included too. Committee members have “team sheets,” which include ESPN’s strength of record and BPI, KPI, KenPom and Sagarin rankings.

Yep! In 2018, the committee got even smarter, and is taking a closer look at road and neutral games.

Instead of looking at teams as top 50 or top 100, the committee is breaking teams down into four “quadrants.”

If a team earns a win against a Quadrant 1 team, that means they’ve beaten a top 30 RPI team at home, top 50 RPI team on a neutral court or top 75 team on the road.

The other quadrants are as follows:

This new system recognizes that winning away from home is hard!

Of course not, internet complainer. The NCAA hates your favorite team.