Men’s Bubble Watch: Tracking which teams will make (or miss) the NCAA
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The 2026 men’s NCAA tournament is rapidly approaching, which means the question top of mind for many fans is: Will your team be in or out? Teams have roughly four weeks until Selection Sunday to strengthen their cases. Until then, we’re here to track how each team on the “bubble” of the bracket is trending.
We’ll use a variety of metrics as guides, classifying teams based on how likely they are to make the field of 68 as one of the 37 at-large selections — conditional on not winning their respective conference tournaments for one of the 31 automatic qualifying bids (AQs). To that end, we’ll use Joe Lunardi’s Bracketology projections and a combination of data sources — including my forecast-model consensus and NCAA résumé metrics such as NET rankings that the selection committee will evaluate — to judge a team’s underlying potential. (For a full glossary of terms and sources, click here or scroll to the bottom of this story.)
We’ll sort teams in at-large contention into the following categories:
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Locks: Teams that would need a significant change in momentum to miss the cut. 28 current teams
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Should be in: Teams tracking above the cutline, though their fates are not yet clear. 11 current teams
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Work to do: The truest “on the bubble” teams, because their chances are closest to a coin flip. 15 current teams
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Long shots: There is little — though not zero — chance they make the Big Dance as an at-large.
Let’s go conference by conference — in order of which project to have the most NCAA tournament bids — to rank the teams in each category based on their chances to secure an at-large bid.
Note: All times Eastern.
Jump to a conference:
Big Ten | SEC | ACC
Big 12 | Big East
Mid-majors
BIG TEN
9.8 expected bids; 8.8 at-large
Locks (5)
Michigan Wolverines
Illinois…
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