In NCAA Basketball, there have certainly been some big snubs from the NCAA Tournament on past Selection Sundays. Here are the 25 most egregious since 2000.
The NCAA Tournament is the greatest sports spectacle. 68 teams are picked to compete, starting in mid-March and going all the way up to the first Monday in April. There are 32 automatic bids taken from winners of each conference. Then, 36 teams are put in based on their performances.
Usually half of those 36 are obvious. One quarter get in based off conference play and the final quarter are pure crap-shoots. But obviously nothing is perfect. Teams will be left off that list of 36. That leads to some serious anger.
Snubs of the NCAA Tournament are the best thing to argue over right after the field is announced. That steam has picked up a bit in recent years. But we’ll get back to that point. The AP and Coaches poll has ZERO influence on picking teams in to the NCAA Tournament.
You’re going to see some examples of teams that were ranked going into Selection Sunday and not getting selected to dance. Those teams do have legitimate reason to feel snubbed, but it isn’t the argument to end all arguments.
Finishing under .500 in one’s conference does not eliminate itself from making the NCAA Tournament. It looks pretty bad, but you’ll see that a team started 14-0 in the non-conference, but ended 7-9 in a power conference and missed the dance.
Going undefeated in a mid-major conference, but failing to win the conference tournament doesn’t secure a bid either. Don’t even think that finishing first regardless of your record and getting into the Tournament.
The NCAA Tournament committee has used formulas throughout the years to try to evaluate teams. Obviously, they aren’t going to strictly use those numbers to seed teams. The most common has been the RPI. This year though, it has been replaced by the NET.
There are some anomalies in the metrics, but usually the top-40 is in decent shape. You’re going to find out that is not the case in a lot of circumstances. Let’s rank each team based on how bad they were snubbed since the 2000 NCAA Tournament.