No team with a .500 record or worse has ever received an NCAA Tournament at-large bid. This makes sense at face value. The tournament doesn’t want bad teams. However. The tournament also wants the best teams. And in a season in which conference play accounts for all but a handful of a team’s games, it’s possible the best teams will, by win-loss record alone, look like bad teams.
It’s a narrow slice of the selection process, but it could become a big storyline this year around the bubble: Teams with otherwise good résumés not having the luxury of playing enough buy games in nonconference play to get comfortable winning records. Teams ranking in the top 30 of KenPom, or NET, or the other rating systems, but sitting a game or two below .500. It’s possible this has already doomed teams on the fringes—Texas in 2019 comes to mind, and the Big Ten’s been playing with fire with it as they’ve expanded their schedule and built a deep middle tier of teams. But this year, it’s going to be worse, because those nonconference games just aren’t there.
What does this mean? Nothing at this point. But looking ahead, be ready for high-major teams to get snubbed, or for precedents to be broken. This could be great for mid-majors. It could be great for future sub-.500 high-majors. It’s a small thing, but it’s going to be a loud argument around the bubble. So if you want to seem smart in a college basketball circle, bring this up!
