Dave Preston is an AP Top 25 voter. Read his ballots here.
The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament begins with two games over four days in Dayton, Ohio. The First Four features two games pitting automatic qualifiers plus two featuring at-large teams for spots in the main bracket.
Tuesday’s doubleheader involves perhaps the most controversial inclusion: North Carolina began the season in the top 10 but needed to win eight of 10 entering Selection Sunday to become the last team in the field, ahead of schools like West Virginia, Indiana, Boise State and George Mason. Other intriguing selections included Oklahoma and Texas, two teams that went 6-12 in the SEC.
Speaking of the SEC, that conference sent a record 14 schools to the NCAA Tournament. So much for being a football factory, this 16-team league is now a hoops haven. Credit sharp athletic departments recognizing the changing winds of the new rules.
“I think what happened, they realized with the NIL coming on board and those schools do so well financially from football. It was very easy in terms of finances to put enough money into your program to be some of the best teams in the country that really hadn’t been concerned with basketball before,” Hall of Fame coach Gary Williams told WTOP after the field was announced.
“A conference like the ACC for example, all of a sudden they’re rated maybe the fifth best conference in the country,” Williams said. “I think the NIL and the transfer portal is something that the ACC was a little slow in adapting to, and it’s really changed the basketball landscape of the ACC.”
Speaking of the ACC, the conference that used to send nine of its 15 teams to the Big Dance as recently as 2018 earned four bids in 2025, its lowest total since 2013 (the final year they had 12 schools). Recent Final Four teams haven’t just slumped, schools like Miami and NC State have cratered, not even qualifying for the 15-team ACC Tournament this March.
Closer to home, Virginia is in the middle of a coaching search after Tony Bennett’s autumn exit. The current hiring cycle that includes Jai Lucas at Miami and whoever gets the Cavalier and Wolfpack jobs will determine if this is only a hiccup or the harbinger of something worse.
The South Region begins with SEC regular season winner Auburn, who was No. 1 for most of the season until a late slump saw the Tigers lose three of four entering Selection Sunday. No. 2 seed Michigan State also won its conference’s regular season before falling in a Saturday semifinal.
Big Ten Tournament champ Michigan is a No. 5, two slots lower than a Wisconsin team it just beat … in the Big Ten Tournament. Sometimes I think the committee has its field set Saturday night and just goes big for brunch on Sunday.
Bold: A First Four at-large team has won 12 of 26 first round games when reaching the main bracket, but no First Four team has reached the second weekend since UCLA won five games in the state of Indiana in the post-COVID 2021 tournament.
As much grief as North Carolina has earned, the only team to beat them over the last month has been Duke. And the winner of Tuesday’s game doesn’t play its first round game until Friday. Wouldn’t it be something if UNC reached the regional?
Fold: Michigan may have won the Big Ten Tournament and boast a pair of twin towers in Danny Wolf and Vladislav Goldin, but the Wolverines had the worst turnover margin in the Big Ten.
The first round is littered with teams that suddenly got hot during their conference tournaments. UC-San Diego hasn’t lost since Jan. 19 and paced the Big West in turnover margin, while being led offensively by 6-foot-6 guard Aniwaniwa Tait-Jones.
Gold: Auburn was the best team in the best league all season long, despite a March hiccup that saw the Tigers lose three of four. Player of the Year Johni Broome (19 points, with 11 rebounds per game) is the type of player who turns March into his personal playpen, at least in the early rounds. And the way the Tigers defend keeps their eye on the Final Four.
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