Automatic Bids and Selection Criteria for the NCAA Tournament

The NCAA Division I Men's and Women's Basketball Tournaments, the heart of "March Madness," captivate audiences with their thrilling competition. The selection process determines which 68 men's teams and 68 women's teams will participate, along with their seedings and matchups in the tournament bracket.

Automatic Qualification

Thirty-two teams (changed from 31) gain automatic entry into the tournament by winning their respective conference championships. For example, SIUE clinched the first automatic qualification into the 2025 NCAA tournament, winning the OVC championship 69-48 over Southeast Missouri State. Regardless of a team's regular-season performance, winning the conference tournament guarantees a spot in the NCAA tournament, provided they are eligible for postseason play. Each of the 32 Division I conferences receives an automatic bid, which they award to the team that wins the postseason conference tournament.

At-Large Bids

The remaining 36 spots for men and 36 for women (changed from 37) are filled by at-large teams chosen by the selection committee. An at-large bid represents the only path to the NCAA tournament for teams that did not win their conference tournament. These teams generally come from college basketball's top conferences, including the ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, and SEC, and to a lesser extent, the American, A-10, Mountain West, and WCC.

The Selection Committee

The selection committee convenes on Selection Sunday, after all regular-season and conference tournament games have concluded, to decide which 36 teams (changed from 37) that are not automatic qualifiers have the credentials to earn an invitation to the tournament.

The NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Committees oversee the selection, seeding, and bracketing process for each tournament. The selection committee comprises athletic directors and conference commissioners from Division I men's and women's athletics, with separate committees for the men's and women's tournaments. The committees consist of one member selected from each of the five autonomy conferences and three members selected from the seven highest-ranked nonautonomy conferences based on basketball success. The remaining four members are selected from the 20 other conferences. All appointments are for five years.

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To avoid potential conflicts of interest, committee members must leave the room when their own school is being discussed (or schools in the case of the conference commissioners). The member may be invited to answer factual questions regarding their team or teams (e.g., status of player injuries).

Selection Criteria

The selection committee considers a multitude of stats and rankings, but there is no set formula that determines whether a team receives an at-large bid or not. The committee's primary task is to select the best 36 at-large teams to join the 32 automatic qualifiers.

The selection committee officially considers predictive computer rankings, such as ESPN's BPI, Sagarin, and Pomeroy Ratings, which use additional factors considered by the committee, such as injured players in the case of the BPI. Additionally, committee members consider how teams perform on the road and at neutral courts, strength of conference and schedule, non-conference strength of schedule, record against other selected tournament teams, and other extenuating factors.

A number of teams are assured an at-large berth no matter their performance in their conference tournament. Most teams in the Top 25 in the national polls are essentially guaranteed at-large berths even if they do not win their respective conference tournaments.

The NET

The NCAA Evaluation Tool is one of many criteria that each committee considers in the team selection and seeding process.

Quadrant System

The NCAA continues to use its "quadrant" system to classify individual wins and losses.

Predictive-Based Metrics

Predictive-based metrics (Torvik, BPI, and KenPom rankings) help evaluate the quality of teams.

Seeding Process

The selection committee's work to seed the teams is just as vital as their work to select the at-large teams. While the selection process starts before the seeding process, the two often overlap. Some conference tournaments do not finish until Selection Sunday itself, and there is only one hour between the end of the last game (usually the Big Ten tournament championship game) and when the brackets are officially unveiled, so the committee cannot wait until after all the games are played to start determining the seeds.

Though the brackets only feature the seed numbers 1-16 in each region, the committee first assembles an overall seed ranking of selected team from 1 through 68, formatted as an "S-curve".

The selection committee uses a number of factors to rank teams for the S-curve, including record, strength of schedule, and the NET in the Division I men's tournament and the RPI in all other championship tournaments. Relative subjective comparison of individual teams close on the S-Curve are also considered.

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The "S-curve" table in the guidelines displays four teams to a row, alternating left-to-right and right-to left. In theory, the teams 1-4 on the seed list will all be #1 seeds in their regions (the #1 "seed line"), 5-8 will be #2 seeds in their regions (the #2 seed line), and so on; however, bracketing rules allow minor deviation from this when necessary to meet other bracketing requirements.

The S-curve rankings are most important for keeping each region balanced, the ideal being that each region will be equally strong. The committee tries to ensure that the top four seeds in each region are comparable to the top four teams in every other region. For example, if one region has the best #1 seed (#1 overall), the weakest #2 seed (#8 overall), the best #3 seed (#9 overall), and the weakest #4 seed (#16 overall), its seeds add up to 34, the ideal number. But if a region has the best team for every given seed, its seeds would add up to 28, and a region with the weakest team in every seed would add up to 40, making the two regions very unbalanced.

While the seeds are almost never perfectly balanced throughout the four regions, the committee strives to ensure that they differ from each other by only a few points.

Once the S-curve is established, the committee must place the teams throughout the four regions. They were originally referred to as East, Mideast, Midwest, and West. In 1985, the Mideast designation became the Southeast, and later the South Regional in 1998. The women's tournament continued to use the Mideast terminology through 2004. In 2004, the NCAA started to identify the men's regions only by the city in which the regional semifinals and finals were played, with the same change being made for the women's tournament in 2005. The NCAA reverted to the East/South/Midwest/West designations for the men's tournament starting in 2007, but continues to designate women's regionals by their cities.

A number of complex rules govern the seeding process, so it is not as simple as merely following the S-curve, although that is the top priority according to the NCAA's rules. Better teams have priority in remaining close to home, but no hosting institution's team can actually play at the location where the institution is hosting tournament games (generally, games are hosted on neutral courts, so this is not usually a problem).

Teams are spread out according to conference. The first three teams within the top 4 seeded lines selected from each conference must be placed in different regions (with a slight exception in 2014, when 11th seed play-in team Tennessee was placed in the Midwest Region with conference foe 8th seed Kentucky). When a conference has more than three teams in the tournament, the committee tries to seed the teams so that they cannot meet until the regional final.

The committee may move a team up or down one seed from its seed line in the S-curve in order to preserve other principles. The committee also takes into consideration other non-basketball factors.

Bubble Teams and Bid Stealers

For bubble teams in both men's and women's basketball, March is filled with uncertainty and drama. A deep run in the conference tournament can push a bubble team into the field.

A "bid stealer" is a team that would not receive an at-large selection to the NCAA tournament but wins its conference tournament to earn an automatic bid. This can in essence eliminate an at-large bid if the bid stealer beats a team in the conference title game that will still receive an at-large bid.

Selection Sunday

Selection Sunday is the day when participants are selected, seeded, placed accordingly, and announced. Both CBS and ESPN cover the selections for the men's tournament live; ESPN also covers selections for the women's tournament live.

Selection Sunday is currently the Sunday before the third Thursday of March, when the first round games begin. It is never before March 11, or after March 17.

CBS has the official rights to cover the selection of the men's tournament field as they are the TV network which covers the vast majority of the tournament. ESPN has exclusive rights to cover the women's tournament selection announcements, as that network has sole rights to the women's tournament.

Beyond the NCAA Tournament

The top 16 teams not selected for the NCAA tournament will receive an automatic bid (exempt status) to the NIT.

Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament

The WBIT features 32 teams from Division I. The remaining at-large field will be determined by the eight-member WBIT Selection Committee.

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