Why Is This Year’s March Madness Bubble So Weak?

This is the first part of a two-part series examining the 2019 NCAA Tournament bubble. Here, I discuss the reasons why the bubble seems much weaker than in previous years. In part 2, which you can find here, I discuss conference records, advanced metrics, and how we should determine which teams receive at-large tournament bids.

Today, February 17th, marks one month until Selection Sunday. We don’t know who will make the tournament and how teams will be seeded yet, but at this stage, the teams in the running are pretty well defined. By my count, there are only about 10 teams currently outside of the field that have a chance to play their way into an at-large spot.

Factoring in the 25 or so teams I’d consider locks right now and the 10 more with nothing immediate to the worry about, this leaves us with about 25 teams that are on the tournament bubble. Looking at those teams, you might come to the same conclusion that many in the college basketball sphere have: THIS. BUBBLE. IS. AWFUL.

The notion of a “weak” bubble is nothing new. We have this same conversation annually about how there simply aren’t a lot of deserving teams on the bubble. Part of this is because we haven’t fully adjusted to the expansion from 65 to 68 teams starting in 2011 that took what had been the first three teams out of the field and gave them a spot in March Madness. Part of it is simply that it’s hard for their to be a lot of really good teams. We end up being forced to pick between the good teams that are heavily flawed. I don’t think a “strong” bubble is really even possible.

But this year truly is different. Of our bubble teams, one of the safest is a 16-10 Oklahoma squad with an awful 4-9 record within the Big 12. Move in even closer, and it gets really ugly. Still in the field is a 14-11 (5-10 Big Ten) Nebraska team which at 12-11 a week ago was remained my last team in. The 13-12 (4-10 Big Ten) Indiana Hoosiers dropped out of the field just yesterday after their 10th loss in 11 games. They now sit in the First Four Out along with Florida (14-11, 6-6 SEC). Until they fell to Seton Hall today, a Creighton team (12-13, 4-9 Big East) which now has a LOSING RECORD, was still in the group outside of the field that could worm back in.

Keep in mind that most of these bubble teams are probably good for 2-3 more losses before Selection Sunday. Last year saw the first ever 15-loss at-large team, an Alabama squad which received a 9-seed (9!), and I wouldn’t count out it happening again this year. With their quality wins and strength of schedule, I’ve got Texas (15-11, 7-6 Big 12) as a very comfortable 8-seed at the moment, and I see no reason why at something like 18-15 the Longhorns would fail to make the tournament. All of this begs a couple questions: why is this year’s bubble so especially poor, and why are we rewarding mediocrity when we could give more chances to teams from smaller conferences?

First off, there are a lot of reason why this year’s bubble is poor. One of the most important is the fall of the mid-major conference. I now consider the American a major conference along with the traditional Power 6 (ACC, Big East, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12, SEC). Outside of these seven conferences, there are no other conferences receiving more than one-bid in my current field.

This decade has seen some of the best mid-major teams move to power conferences (Wichita State and Memphis to the American, Creighton to the Big East) which has really hurt the Missouri Valley and Conference USA. Outside of this, though, we still have leagues which traditionally were competitive for multiple bids and sometimes even saw 3 or 4 teams in the field (Atlantic 10, Mountain West, WCC) struggle to stay in the at-large conversation.

On top of this, the Pac-12 hardly has a pulse this year, with Washington the only clear NCAA Tournament team. This all serves to benefit the biggest conferences. Right now, the top five (ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC) conferences all have at least five bids and account for 33 of the 36 projected at-large bids. The Big Ten has even bolstered their chances of gaining at-larges by lengthening their conference schedule from 18 to 20 games this season, increasing their strength of schedules and giving more opportunities for quality wins at the expense of some slightly weaker overall records.

Additionally, it does seem to me like the top 25 or so teams, that group of “locks” I mentioned earlier, are stronger as a whole than they are in most years. On the other hand, in conferences like the Big East and Pac-12, the top few teams have gotten a big weaker while the bottom teams have improved, resulting in a pool of mediocrity in the middle that in most cases isn’t quite worthy of consideration.

So the bubble is weak. However, I do anticipate the bubble becoming a little stronger during Championship Week, by virtue of there being less available spots. This is because we’ve had an unusually high number of teams from one-bid leagues that stand a good chance for at-large bids if they fail to win their conference tournaments.

In each of the last four years, the last four at-large teams in the field, the teams that played in Dayton for the right to make the Round of 64, were given 11-seeds. This means that these final at-large teams were deemed better than the conference tournament champions that ended up with 12-16 seeds.

They don’t have to be 11-seeds, though. Depending on the strength of the teams with auto-bids, the seed can change. Currently, I have the last four teams in receiving 12-seeds, behind some one-bid league conference leaders.

Last season, the Atlantic 10 champion Davidson received a 12-seed. Right now, I think VCU is a 10 or 11. Last year, MAC champ Buffalo was a 13. As of today, they are a 7. Lipscomb out of the Atlantic Sun has gone from a 15 a year ago to a current 11, and UNC Greensboro earned a 12 out of the Southern Conference, where Wofford could easily get an 8 or 9. All four of these teams could get in even without winning their conference tournament, and for each team that does, the bubble gets a spot smaller.

So the bubble is soft now, but it might look a little better by Selection Sunday. But that still leaves us with the question of why we reward teams with mediocre overall records and sometimes losing records in conference play over smaller schools with much better records. How do we determine who the at-large spots should go to, anyways?

The answer to that question is a little more difficult this year than in most, and requires an evaluation of advanced metrics and the NCAA’s criterion for ranking teams. I take a look at all of it in the second part of this miniseries.