
Look away, bubble teams, it’s NCAA Tournament bid-stealing season.
The month is March, which means that NCAA Basketball Tournament bracketology is in full swing while the regular season comes to a close and conference tournaments heat up.
Three teams have already won their conference tournaments and clinched an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament with Murray State winning the Ohio Valley, Longwood winning the Big South, and Loyola Chicago winning the Missouri Valley.
On topic for this piece, the Ohio Valley almost had a bid-stealer in Morehead State, but No. 19 Murray State was able to hold off that upset bid for their twentieth straight win heading into the NCAA Tournament.
To further the speculation, there’s a chance that Drake could have also been a bid-stealer had they upset Loyola Chicago in the Missouri Valley Championship, but the Ramblers’ spot in the field would have been uncertain heading into Selection Sunday.
By Wednesday morning, 11 teams will have punched their ticket to the NCAA Tournament with the other 21 conference tournaments all in progress.
There’s really only one definition for a bid-stealer but just so we’re all on the same page, I’m considering a bid-stealer to be a team that would not have made the NCAA Tournament in the form of an at-large that wins its conference tournament over a team (or teams) that will get into the NCAA Tournament with an at-large.
All bracket and seeding information in this piece is pulled directly from Bracket Matrix, which compiles and averages the work of more than 100 bracketologists from around the country.