{"id":543851,"date":"2026-03-16T10:29:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T10:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/543851\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T10:29:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T10:29:13","slug":"march-madness-2026-here-are-the-5-biggest-ncaa-mens-tournament-snubs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/543851\/","title":{"rendered":"March Madness 2026: Here are the 5 biggest NCAA men’s tournament snubs"},"content":{"rendered":"

This would be the most ludicrous possible year for college sports leaders to try to ram NCAA tournament<\/a> expansion down our throats.<\/p>\n

There were scarcely enough worthy bubble teams to fill out a 68-team field, let alone a 76-team one.<\/p>\n

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When CBS unveiled this year\u2019s bracket on Sunday evening<\/a>, Texas snagged one of the final bids despite a pedestrian 18-14 record and losses in five of its last six games. So did SMU even though the Mustangs also endured a similar late-season nosedive and finished with a sub-.500 record in league play.<\/p>\n

Miami (Ohio) also controversially earned one of the final at-large bids awarded by the committee. The RedHawks (31-1) were the only team to finish the men\u2019s college basketball regular season without a loss<\/a>, but they piled up wins against a schedule ranked 340th, one featuring three games against NAIA opponents and a handful of other non-league matchups against the dregs of Division I.<\/p>\n

[Enter Yahoo Fantasy Bracket Mayhem now for your shot at $50K<\/a>]<\/p>\n

While those bubble teams experienced the relief of hearing their name called, others weren\u2019t so lucky. Here are this year\u2019s biggest NCAA tournament snubs, each of whom the selection committee found to be even less deserving than the flawed teams who made the 68-team field ahead of them.<\/p>\n

\"Which<\/p>\n

Which teams got the short end of the stick and were left out of the NCAA tournament by the selection committee? (Davis Long\/Yahoo Sports)<\/p>\n

1. Oklahoma (19-15, 7-11 SEC)<\/p>\n

\u200b\u200bWAB: 49 |\u200b\u200b SOR: 46 |\u00a0 KenPom: 40 | NET: 47 | Q1: 4-10 | Q2: 6-5 | Q3: 2-0 | Q4: 7-0<\/p>\n

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As recently as early February, Oklahoma was a sub-.500 team on a nine-game losing streak with no realistic hope of making the NCAA tournament. To their credit, the Sooners kept fighting, started defending and rebounding better and out of nowhere turned their season around.<\/p>\n

[Click here for NCAA tournament printable bracket<\/a>]<\/p>\n

It started with a one-point road win at Vanderbilt. Then came a rout of Georgia. Oklahoma kept the momentum going into the SEC tournament, taking down South Carolina and Texas A&M before pushing Arkansas to the game\u2019s final possession.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis team is playing their best basketball,\u201d Oklahoma coach Porter Moser told reporters after the Arkansas loss. \u201cI don’t think people want to see us in the tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Unfortunately for Oklahoma, committee members are among those people. While the Sooners\u2019 late-season surge lifted them into the bubble conversation, they were still just 4-10 in Quadrant 1 and 10-15 in the top two quadrants. Their profile was similar to that of Texas, just with fewer Quadrant 1 wins and key road wins.<\/p>\n

2. Auburn (17-16, 7-11 SEC)<\/p>\n

\u200b\u200bWAB: 44 |\u200b\u200b SOR: 43 |\u00a0 KenPom: 38 | NET: 39 | Q1: 4-13 | Q2: 3-2 | Q3: 4-1 | Q4: 6-0<\/p>\n

Never before has an at-large bid been awarded to a team with 16 or more total losses or to a team that is just a single game over .500. Auburn didn\u2019t accomplish enough to persuade this year\u2019s committee to break with either precedent.<\/p>\n

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The case for Auburn was that the Tigers have played the nation\u2019s second-toughest schedule and showed the ability to defeat elite teams. They boasted marquee wins over Florida, St. John\u2019s, Arkansas and Kentucky, as well as victories over fellow bubble teams NC State and Texas. Auburn\u2019s team-sheets metrics also compared favorably with those of other bubble teams. Its r\u00e9sum\u00e9-based metrics were in the low-to-mid 40s. The predictive ones were even better.<\/p>\n

“Our guys have some of the best wins in college basketball,” Auburn coach Steven Pearl told reporters Thursday<\/a>, adding that Auburn is a \u201cteam that can win games in the tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, the counterpoint to Pearl\u2019s stump speech was that Auburn simply didn\u2019t win enough games. The Tigers went 4-13 in Quadrant 1 games and 11-16 against the top three Quadrants. Yes, they played a lot of good teams, but they lost to most of them.<\/p>\n

3. San Diego State (22-11, 14-6 MWC)<\/p>\n

\u200b\u200bWAB: 45 |\u200b\u200b SOR: 51 |\u00a0 KenPom: 47 | NET: 45 | Q1: 3-7 | Q2: 6-3 | Q3: 6-1 | Q4: 6-0<\/p>\n

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With eight returning players from an NCAA tournament team, three veteran transfers and a pair of promising freshmen, San Diego State appeared to have the ingredients for another strong season.<\/p>\n

For whatever reason, it just didn\u2019t fully materialize.<\/p>\n

It started in non-league play when the Aztecs took a double-overtime home loss to Troy, trailed by as many as 18 against middling Baylor and got overwhelmed by the likes of Michigan and Arizona. Oregon was the one power-conference team that San Diego State beat, but the Ducks uncharacteristically lost 20 games this season and wound up as a Quadrant 3 victory.<\/p>\n

The hole that San Diego State dug was deep enough that finishing outright second place in the Mountain West and advancing to the title game of the league tournament wasn\u2019t quite enough. The Aztecs were a solid 9-10 in Quadrant 1 and 2 games, but their most notable achievements all season were a home win over Utah State and taking two of three from New Mexico.<\/p>\n

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This was San Diego State\u2019s 12th trip to the Mountain West title game in the past 15 seasons. The Aztecs have lost nine times. They had already secured an NCAA tournament bid before most of those previous losses, but this time they fell short.<\/p>\n

4. New Mexico (23-10, 13-7 MWC)<\/p>\n

\u200b\u200bWAB: 58 |\u200b\u200b SOR: 64 |\u00a0 KenPom: 50 | NET: 46 | Q1: 2-7 | Q2: 6-1 | Q3: 5-2 | Q4: 9-0<\/p>\n

New Mexico exceeded modest expectations in Eric Olen\u2019s debut season, but that will be little consolation prize after the Lobos narrowly missed the NCAA tournament. Needing a victory in a Mountain West semifinal against San Diego State that amounted to a bubble-elimination game for both teams, New Mexico dropped a 64-62 heartbreaker on a BJ Davis go-ahead layup with 2.1 seconds left in regulation.<\/p>\n

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New Mexico\u2019s non-league victories over Santa Clara and VCU boosted its profile, as did a solid 8-8 record against the top two quadrants, but the Lobos otherwise didn\u2019t have enough meat on their resume. Losses at New Mexico State and at home against Colorado State were anchors on the Lobos\u2019 resume. They finished with as many Quadrant 3 losses (2) as they had Quadrant 1 wins.<\/p>\n

5. Indiana (18-14, 9-11 Big Ten)<\/p>\n

\u200b\u200bWAB: 52 |\u200b\u200b SOR: 50 |\u00a0 KenPom: 45 | NET: 41 | Q1: 3-10 | Q2: 3-4 | Q3: 5-0 | Q4: 7-0<\/p>\n

Indiana was poised to make the NCAA tournament with room to spare before a stunning late-season implosion. The Hoosiers dropped six of their final seven games culminating with Wednesday\u2019s Big Ten tournament-opening dud against Northwestern in their last chance to make their case to the selection committee.<\/p>\n

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That loss essentially extinguished Indiana\u2019s fading hopes of making the NCAA tournament in Darren DeVries\u2019 debut season. The Hoosiers did beat Purdue, UCLA and Wisconsin during Big Ten play, but they were just 3-10 in Quadrant 1 games and 6-14 against the top two quadrants. That\u2019s an NIT r\u00e9sum\u00e9 if ever there was one.<\/p>\n

The most discouraging part for Indiana is that this was a team assembled to win now. DeVries sacrificed building for the future to bring in veteran transfers to try to get the Hoosiers back to the NCAA tournament. That didn\u2019t happen. And now Indiana has little to show for year one under its new coach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This would be the most ludicrous possible year for college sports leaders to try to ram NCAA tournament…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[5809,64,63,89716,726,87132,269488,2755,4715,8440,20525,704,5774,12293,3371,3369,45056,119754,125406,8447,85,3370,8451,12216],"class_list":["post-543851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-arkansas","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-aztecs","tag-basketball","tag-baylor","tag-bubble-teams","tag-florida","tag-kentucky","tag-michigan","tag-nc-state","tag-ncaa","tag-new-mexico","tag-ohio","tag-oklahoma","tag-oregon","tag-purdue","tag-san-diego-state","tag-sooners","tag-south-carolina","tag-sports","tag-texas","tag-ucla","tag-wisconsin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543851","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=543851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}