Bauertology: 2/16/26

In less than a month, we will have an NCAA Tournament bracket. (Did you get a little shiver down your spine reading that? I know I did.)

Yes, there are now just 27 days standing between us Selection Sunday. The season always flies by so fast, and this year is no exception. It seemed like just yesterday that Queens and Winthrop got it all tipped off from the Rock Hill Gym at the impossibly early time of 8 a.m. (6 a.m. if you live in the mountains like me). Distant memories still fresh in the mind… but save the looking-back for later. We’ve still got a ton of great basketball to go.

I don’t have any particularly pressing matters on my mind in regard to today’s Bauertology writeup, so why don’t we do a little preemptive Q&A instead? Hopefully I can knock out a couple of your questions about how today’s bracket was built before you’re even able to ask them!

Q: How close is Houston to cracking the 1 seed line?

Very. Whereas Michigan, Duke, and Arizona are still firmly on the top layer with nearly every metric between them residing in the top-4, UConn remains susceptible to being passed with quality metrics averaging a rank of 9.7. Houston’s quality numbers are well ahead of the Huskies at a mean of 3.0, but all three résumé metrics remain behind UConn, as does the Cougars’ Quad 1A win output of two: half of UConn’s 4. But that may not be the case a week from now; while UConn essentially just needs to survive against the likes of Creighton and Villanova, Houston has the opportunity for a massive résumé overhaul in their next two games: at Iowa State, vs. Arizona. A win in either one of those is probably enough to push the Cougars up to the 1 line, even if the Huskies go 2-0. (And honestly, UConn might prefer that, so that they can be the top 2 seed and go East to the DC regional, rather than be stuck going to the South’s Houston regional as the final 1 seed.) But that’s all to be figured out once the games are actually played…

Q: Purdue moves down two spots for picking up a 21-point Quad 1A road win at Iowa? How is that possible?

Building the bracket can be a funny thing. Basically anywhere else in the overall seed list, a win of that caliber would be enough to shoot a team up one, maybe two, seed lines. But Purdue’s got a ceiling to deal with at #6 overall due to the already weighty résumés of the top-5 teams, so the Boilermakers aren’t able to move up any further. Then, on top of that, you get into the issue of the two teams behind Purdue: Iowa State and Illinois. In my previous bracket, when I had Purdue at #6, the Boilers had the benefit of a buffer team, that being Kansas. But with the Jayhawks falling down to the 3 line after getting blown out in Ames, that buffer is no longer present, while the Cyclones’ and Fighting Illini’s victories over the weekend slot them back up on the 2 line: right where Purdue is already waiting. And while I’ve said plenty of times before that head-to-head matchups don’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things, as they are just a single data point in a field of 30+, it’s a little different here, considering Purdue’s losses to Iowa State and Illinois both came in Mackey Arena, the former by 23 points. My gut says that the selection committee is going to care about those games in particular when it comes to preferential placement in the bracket. So, yeah, Purdue moves down despite picking up one of the better road wins of the weekend. That’s life!

Q: Likewise, other teams like Indiana and UCLA moved up despite losing. How does that work?

Just as winning doesn’t guarantee that you move up, losing doesn’t guarantee that you move down; the inverse is entirely possible based on the other outcomes around you. For Indiana, most bracketologists had already moved the Hoosiers up from a 10 seed to a 9; I held firm at a 10 due to that unsightly 4-8 record in Quad 1/2 games, now 4-9 after the loss at Illinois. But there’s a whole lot of unsightly in that region in the bracket: Auburn is a 9 seed with a 6-11 Quad 1/2 record, Saint Mary’s is a 9 seed without a Quad 1 win, Texas is a 10 seed with a losing record in Quads 1-3… You get the picture. Indiana’s not the only team on the bubble with moldy spots, and their weekend result of a road loss to a very good Illini team is small beans compared to some of the other bubble results we saw. Ditto for UCLA—losing by 30 is never a good thing, but their quality metrics were already in a good enough spot to withstand that kind of blow. Meanwhile, the résumé metrics were never going to be impacted seriously by losing in the arena of the #1 overall seed, so the Bruins aren’t punished too badly for that defeat, while teams that lost at home (Missouri, Santa Clara, Virginia Tech, etc.) drop around them.

Q: Auburn is not just in the field at 14-11 overall, but as a 9 seed? How come?

One thing that I’ve learned in my years of bracketology is that a team’s overall record doesn’t really matter for their seed, UNLESS that record is two games above .500 or worse. Traditionally, that’s been the breaking point for inclusion into the field, as there hasn’t been an at-large bid handed out to a team just two games above .500 since 2001: that was Georgia at 16-14, who had the #1 most difficult schedule that year, with only one of their 30 games being played against an opponent outside the KenPom top-100. While Auburn’s slate hasn’t been quite as arduous, the Tigers still the own NET #1 overall strength of schedule and #13 overall non-conference strength of the schedule. That’s going to give Auburn a ton of leeway, especially when they indeed have both strong non-con wins (NC State, St. John’s) and the only victory by any team in Gainesville this season. That, alongside them still complying with the unwritten “three-games-above-.500” rule is enough for their metric profile to not just be included but also be seeded fairly comfortably. All that said… I certainly wouldn’t test this recent slide any further. And given that Auburn is favored in five of their last six games, I don’t think that we’ll have to worry about this whole overall-record clause much longer.

Q: You’ve got Saint Louis and Miami (OH) in a 6-11 game. Would the selection committee actually pit two of the top mid-majors against each other like that?

Unfortunately, yes. Although there’s always a lot of chit-chat every March about the committee “fixing” matchups that they want to see, there’s no really no truth to that; all their decisions about who goes where in the bracket are determined by their guiding principles, conveniently located right here on the Bauertology website. One of the top priorities when bracketing the teams selected to the First Four in Dayton is to eliminate travel hassle as much as possible by sending those teams to the closest available sites (while also making sure that at least one pairing is in a Friday/Sunday pod to avoid the possibility of a team playing a game two days in a row). That’s also why you’ll see the potential for TCU-Florida and Missouri-Kansas rematches in today’s bracket; I just don’t think the committee is too concerned about creating a non-conference rematch in the second round—even ones as notable as those—when travel distance is a more pressing matter. So, with those play-in matchups bracketed as close to Dayton as possible, and my top 11 seed Georgia getting bracketing priority over bottom 11 seed Miami, the RedHawks are unfortunately shipped to San Diego for a first-round game between two of the top mid-major stories this season. Wouldn’t be the first time this has happened; 7 and 10 seeds Murray State and San Francisco played in an overtime classic in the 2022 tournament’s first round. Darn you, bracketing principles!

That’s enough Q&A for now, but I’ll be happy to field any more questions and concerns that come to your mind! As is always the case, my automatic bids are chosen based on who ranks highest in my résumé metric BRCT in each conference. See you on Wednesday when the second edition of Bauer’s Bubble Watch is ready to go!