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Full slate of games begins Thursday with national champion set to be crowned in Indianapolis on April 6
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Associated Press
Associated Press
Eddie Pells
Published Mar 15, 2026 • 4 minute read
Duke celebrates winning the championship of the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament.
Duke celebrates winning the championship of the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament in an NCAA college basketball game in Charlotte, N.C., Saturday, March 14, 2026. Photo by Nell Redmond /AP Photo
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The team that went undefeated in the regular season, racked up more victories than anyone but Duke and Arizona — and fewer losses than any team at all — is anything but your run-of-the-mill basketball behemoth.
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In fact, Miami (Ohio), despite that 31-1 record and maybe because of a little chip that’s been placed on its shoulder, is one of those plucky underdogs that makes the NCAA Tournament what it is.
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Welcome to March Madness with a twist.
While Duke (32-2) took the overall top seed on Selection Sunday, with Arizona (32-2), Michigan (31-3) and defending champion Florida (26-7) also on the top line, the RedHawks barely scratched their way into the bracket.
They are an 11 seed and have to play a First Four game against SMU on Wednesday. But after all the debate and hand-wringing that came with their single loss last week, which immediately turned them from sure thing into bubble team, they now enjoy the same privilege as the other 67 teams in the field.
They will have a chance to win and advance, with no selection committee, bracketologists or former coaches-turned-TV experts deciding their fate.
“I was very confident,” Miami forward Eian Elmer said. “I think it’s hard to leave a team that’s 31-0 in a regular season out. It just wouldn’t look right for the sport, diminishing something like that, something that’s very rarely done.”
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After the First Four, the full slate of games begins Thursday and Friday, with the national champion set to be crowned in Indianapolis on April 6.
The chair of the selection committee, Keith Gill, tried to explain how Miami of the lightly regarded Mid-American Conference ended up where it did. The RedHawks, he said, were not the last of the 37 at-large teams slotted into the field.
But, he said, they were ranked last of those 37 teams because once they got in, they were compared against other teams close to them, and things like their 339th-ranked strength of schedule and zero wins (in fact, zero games) against top-caliber, or Quadrant 1 opponents worked against them.
Other factors worked for them, including having the nation’s second-ranked scoring offense, along with a “strength of record” in the top 30 and “wins above bubble” in the top 40 (each of those statistics would take a small pamphlet to explain).
“They have some really strong resume metrics that show their accomplishments,” Gill said.
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For what it’s worth, Miami is an 8 1/2-point underdog against SMU and a 2000-1 longshot to win it all, according to BetMGM Sportsbook.
Unlikely, indeed, but still better odds than the much-cited 9.2 quintillion-1 odds a person has of filling out a perfect bracket.
Some conference tournaments mean more than others
The favorite to win the national championship, according to BetMGM, is Michigan, which was listed at 13-4 shortly after the bracket came out, just a tad ahead of Duke, which was 10-3.
The Wolverines took a mini-hit in the seedings, dropping a notch to overall No. 3 after an eight-point loss to Purdue in the Big Ten title game. The Boilermakers are a 2 seed instead of a 3 with the win, heading to St. Louis to play tournament first-timer Queens.
The conference title did not do as much for St. John’s, which stayed where it’s been predicted most of the season — as a No. 5 — even after a 20-point win over UConn for the Big East title.
Last year, St. John’s became the sixth team coach Rick Pitino had led to the tournament. This year, the Johnnies go again but they must travel to San Diego to face Northern Iowa in the first round.
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“I said, ‘Don’t take it as a negative,”‘ Pitino said. “I’ve had teams go to a Final Four that first had to go to Portland and then Arizona from Louisville.”
Bubble bursts for Auburn, San Diego State, others
Among those left out were San Diego State, Indiana, Oklahoma and Auburn.
The Tigers had 16 losses but the nation’s third-best strength of schedule. The snub drew predictable blowback from Bruce Pearl, their former coach and father of their current coach, who was working for CBS and said “they played the toughest schedule in the country and I don’t know if they were rewarded for it.”
Even with Oklahoma and Auburn left out, the Southeastern Conference led the way by placing 10 teams in the field of 68, four short of its record from last year.
The Big Ten followed with nine, the ACC and Big 12 with eight apiece — an unsurprising result in an era of massive conference expansion and NIL compensation drawing top players to the biggest spenders.
The Gators are the defending champion, trying to repeat their back-to-back titles from 2006-07. Last season, Florida was part of an all-No. 1 Final Four — the first time that had happened in 17 seasons.
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Committee looked at seeding principles in some instances, not in others
Asked how the NCAA’s seeding principles played a role in moving teams around in the bracket, Gill pointed to the First Four meeting between NC State and Texas the committee would have liked to avoid because it is a rematch of a game they played in the Maui Invitational in November.
He said nothing about placing No. 2 seed Houston in the South, where it could play the regional final in its hometown _ normally something the NCAA shies away from. The game could be against Florida in what would be a rematch of last year’s national championship game.
“If we have to run into that issue, there’s worse problems in the world,” Gators coach Todd Golden said earlier this week. But “I would enjoy somebody else in Houston (rather) than Houston.”
— AP Sports Writers Mike Fitzpatrick and Joe Reedy contributed.
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