{"id":192889,"date":"2026-03-16T00:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T00:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/192889\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T00:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T00:08:10","slug":"miami-ohio-gets-into-march-madness-bracket-after-losing-undefeated-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/192889\/","title":{"rendered":"Miami Ohio gets into March Madness bracket after losing undefeated season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Make that 31 and \u201cPhew!\u201d for Miami-Ohio.<\/p>\n<p>The NCAA Tournament Selection Committee stamped the RedHawks as legitimate and rescued the last team in the country <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/03\/12\/sports\/miami-ohio-chokes-away-undefeated-season-and-now-has-to-sweat-march-madness-bubble\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">to lose its undefeated record<\/a> from the bubble with inclusion in the 68-team bracket as a No. 11 seed.<\/p>\n<p>Selected as the fourth-to-last at-large team in the field, Miami-Ohio will face SMU on Wednesday in the First Four for the right to be the No. 11 seed in the Midwest Region. The winner of a game in Dayton \u2014 only two hours from Miami\u2019s campus \u2014 will face No. 6 Tennessee.<\/p>\n<p>Miami-Ohio finished the regular season with a 31-0 record but choked in its first game of the MAC Tournament, losing to UMass. Akron stole the league\u2019s automatic bid by winning the tournament, but the MAC was able to secure an at-large bid for the first time since 1999.<\/p>\n<p><img style=\"aspect-ratio:1.49926794;display:block\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-modal-image=\"38788894\" width=\"885\" height=\"590\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2265577019.jpg\" alt=\"Miami (OH) RedHawks guard Luke Skaljac (3) drives to the basket as UMass Minutemen guard Danny Carbuccia (0) defends during the MAC quarterfinals on March 12, 2026.\" class=\"wp-image-38788894\"  \/>Miami (OH) RedHawks guard Luke Skaljac (3) drives to the basket as UMass Minutemen guard Danny Carbuccia (0) defends during the MAC quarterfinals on March 12, 2026. Icon Sportswire via Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>Of the five teams to go undefeated during the regular season in the 21st century, only Miami-Ohio and St. Joseph\u2019s (2004) lost in its conference tournament. St. Joseph\u2019s still received a No. 1 seed.<\/p>\n<p>But seeding is much more metrics-based nowadays and the numbers made this a close call.<\/p>\n<p>The Redhawks\u2019 non-conference strength of schedule ranked No. 361 (out of 365). Within the MAC \u2013 the NCAA\u2019s 17th-ranked conference, for what it\u2019s worth \u2013 they didn\u2019t even have the best NET rating (Akron).<\/p>\n<p>The 31-0 start included zero Quad 1 (most-difficult) games and 15 Quad 4 (easiest) games.<\/p>\n<p>The one metric favoring Miami-Ohio was Wins Above Bubble, where it ranked No. 38 \u2013 ahead of fellow bubble teams like Santa Clara, Missouri, VCU and Missouri.<\/p>\n<p>Former Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl has been <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/03\/02\/sports\/miami-ohio-ad-blasts-bruce-pearls-awful-disrespect\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">one of the biggest critics of Miami-Ohio\u2019s r\u00e9sum\u00e9<\/a>, though his opinion was clouded by DNA. Pearl\u2019s son, Steven, replaced his father and led the Tigers to a 17-16 mark \u2013 no team has ever gotten in with 16 losses or a record one game above .500.<\/p>\n<p>The Selection Committee could\u2019ve had fun with a Miami-Ohio\/Auburn matchup in the First Four but instead favored the 31-game winning streak over a mediocre team in the powerhouse SEC.<\/p>\n<p>One year ago, the committee handed out bids to SEC-bottom-feeders instead of worthy mid-majors and looked foolish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Make that 31 and \u201cPhew!\u201d for Miami-Ohio. The NCAA Tournament Selection Committee stamped the RedHawks as legitimate and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[8294,33737,88351,123,125,124,11474,110],"class_list":["post-192889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-college-basketball","tag-march-madness","tag-march-madness-2026","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-ncaa-tournament","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}