{"id":541760,"date":"2026-03-15T10:29:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T10:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/541760\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T10:29:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T10:29:07","slug":"march-madness-automatic-bids-2026-what-basketball-teams-won-conference-tournaments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/541760\/","title":{"rendered":"March Madness automatic bids 2026: What basketball teams won conference tournaments?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For weeks, the teams that make up the 68-team Men\u2019s NCAA Tournament<\/a> bracket have been a source of constant speculation, prompting heated discussions revolving around NET rankings<\/a>, Quad One games and Wins Above Bubble<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For nearly half of the field, though, there isn\u2019t a debate about whether they should be included.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

March Madness bubble winners, losers: 1 bid stealer lives, another fades away<\/a><\/p>\n

The NCAA tournament rewards automatic bids to the champions of each of the 31 Division I conference tournaments. It\u2019s a setup from which much of March\u2019s madness comes, with small schools from the smallest conferences<\/a> earning a chance to try to stun national powerhouses on the biggest, brightest stage their sport has to offer.<\/p>\n

In the two weeks leading up to Selection Sunday, schools from across the country compete in conference tournaments, with a spot in the Big Dance on the line. For many of those leagues, it\u2019s the only and only bid that\u2019s available.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

With the start of the tournament approaching, who has locked up those coveted spots? Here\u2019s a look at who has earned automatic berths to the 2026 men’s NCAA Tournament:<\/p>\n

Think you can beat our expert? Join USA TODAY\u2019s Bracket Challenge today!<\/a><\/p>\n

Ready to win March Madness? Join USA TODAY\u2019s Survivor Pool today!<\/a><\/p>\n

March Madness automatic bids 2026<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a rundown of the team that have won their conference tournaments and earned bids to the 2026 NCAA Tournament:<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Conference USA: Kennesaw State<\/p>\n

Missouri Valley: Northern Iowa<\/p>\n

Mountain West: Utah State<\/p>\n

Ohio Valley: Tennessee State<\/p>\n

Summit: North Dakota State<\/p>\n

Here are the conferences whose championship games will play out on Sunday, March 15:<\/p>\n

American: Wichita State vs. South Florida<\/p>\n

Atlantic 10: Dayton vs. VCU<\/p>\n

Big Ten: Michigan vs. Purdue<\/p>\n

Ivy League: Yale vs. Penn<\/p>\n

SEC: Arkansas vs. Vanderbilt<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: March Madness automatic bids 2026: Full list of conference tournament champions<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For weeks, the teams that make up the 68-team Men\u2019s NCAA Tournament bracket have been a source of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,268393,726,262895,153046,1534,85],"class_list":["post-541760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-automatic-berths","tag-basketball","tag-conference-tournaments","tag-march-madness","tag-ncaa-tournament","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}