Men's NCAA Bracket 2025: Who Got Screwed in the NCAA Bracket?

The bracket for the 2025 men's NCAA tournament has officially been released.

By the time the games begin Tuesday evening, it'll be full steam ahead, all eyes on the prize, focusing on what's to come.

(Click here to play the NCAA March Madness Men's Bracket Challenge.)

We've got some time before then, however, to dwell on some of the colossal screw jobs by this year's selection committee.

How in the world did West Virginia get left out of this field while North Carolina, Texas and Xavier got in?

Did this committee watch a single game that 30-win Drake or 30-win UC San Diego played?

They certainly didn't watch many conference tournament games after, oh, Thursday afternoon. That's clear from some of these seedings.

Put on your HAZMAT suits, because I'm bringing the venom.

How Do You Leave Out West Virginia?

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West Virginia's Darian DeVries

Truly, I did not think I was going to be able to get mad about any particular team getting left out of this year's field. The bubble was putrid—all the evidence one should ever need to conclude that the field should never expand.

But West Virginia didn't even feel like a team on the bubble.

Most bracketologists had the Mountaineers as a No. 10 seed, with quite a few No. 9 seeds in the fold.

At last check of the Bracket Matrix before the Selection Show, there were 111 projections.

West Virginia was in all 111 of them.

For good reason. They beat No. 4 seed Arizona and No. 8 seed Gonzaga on a neutral floor. They won at No. 7 seed Kansas, and scored a home win over No. 3 seed Iowa State.

While North Carolina beat UCLA by two in New York City, and...

That's it. End of list. Unless you want to pat them on the back for blowing out No. 16 seed American. In which case, three cheers also to West Virginia for blowing out No. 15 seed Robert Morris.

You know what, though?

I had North Carolina as my last team in.

An ACC team always sneaks in. Always. Syracuse, so many times. Notre Dame in 2022 was so very gross. Nobody wanted Virginia in last year, even Virginia, yet it made the field. And this particular ACC team had its athletic director as the selection committee chair. Call it a conspiracy theory, but it was right.

What's more shocking is that West Virginia was left out while Texas and Xavier both got in.

Xavier's best wins weren't nearly as good as WVU's best wins. Texas had more great wins, but suffered 15 losses and played a dreadful nonconference schedule.

And in Bubba Cunningham's explanation for why West Virginia was left out, he mentioned they've been playing without Tucker DeVries.

DeVries has been out since Dec. 6! They won the Kansas and Iowa State games without him!

You want to talk about injuries, how about Xavier's second-best win of the season came against a UConn team playing without its freshman stud, Liam McNeeley? Seems relevant! And Marquette was down its sixth man when Xavier eked out that game by a deuce.

Inconceivable. Javon Small and the Mountaineers deserved better. If anything, they should be rewarded for going 10-10 in the Big 12 without what was supposed to be their brightest star.

The 30-Win Mid-Majors Deserved Better

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Drake's Bennett Stirtz

Both the Drake Bulldogs and the UC San Diego Tritons had phenomenal seasons.

There have been 30-win teams from mid-majors who we all knew weren't actually very good, but these teams were good.

Drake had three Quad 3 missteps in Missouri Valley Conference play, but went undefeated in six tries against Quads 1 and 2. Every other team that played at least four Q1/2 games suffered multiple losses in that tier, but the Bulldogs went 6-0, including a neutral-site victory over a dancing Vanderbilt team, as well as a road win over Kansas State.

They finished with a resume metrics average of around 35, which pointed toward a possible No. 9 seed. But they ended up at No. 44 on the overall seed list, behind First Four teams Texas, Xavier and San Diego State, if you can believe that. If the Bulldogs had lost to Bradley in the Arch Madness championship, they would've been left out with 29 wins.

Same goes for UC San Diego, which ended up three spots behind Drake at No. 47 overall and on the No. 12 seed line.

Here some of us were hoping for a two-bid Big West with UC Irvine also having a sensational season, but that was a pipe dream. The Anteaters weren't even mentioned as one of the first four teams out, and the Tritons clearly would've missed the cut without that conference championship.

This despite a true road win over Utah State and two wins away from home against UCI among their 17 road/neutral victories. They were 46th or better in every single metric except for college basketball's drunk uncle, BPI, yet weren't seeded in the top 46.

The message, as always, is that the game is rigged against the little guys.

Win 33 percent of games played in the SEC after a joke of a nonconference schedule where you lost to two teams that didn't make the tournament? Here you go, Texas! Have a bid!

Screw up twice while having little choice but to play 25+ games against Quads 3 and 4? Do better! Hope you get that auto bid!

Even VCU was clearly screwed if it didn't win the A-10 title on Sunday. Not only did the Rams land at No. 45 overall, but they outright said during the selection show that they had a contingency vote about the final spot on the at-large cut line on Saturday night in case Memphis lost to UAB, but made no mention of VCU's game against George Mason. And the Rams had a resume/predictive metrics average of around 37.

Surprise, Surprise: Major Conference Tournaments Were Irrelevant Again

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We say it every year.

We bang the drum. We tap the sign. We remind ourselves ad nauseum that the major conference tournaments clearly don't matter for any purposes other than a possible bid thief.

And yet, every year, that doubt comes creeping back in.

"Maybe this year's committee members will care," it whispers.

They never do.

We might as well set our brackets on Thursday afternoon and just come back to update the auto bids 72 hours later and call it a week.

Exhibit A: Michigan Wolverines.

I had Michigan at No. 20 overall to start the week and was even a bit uncomfortable with how low I was on them. Then they go out and annihilate No. 4 seed Purdue, win on an incredible buzzer-beater against No. 4 seed Maryland and beat No. 3 seed Wisconsin to secure the championship and ended up at...No. 17 overall. Two spots behind Maryland and three behind Purdue. Outrageous.

Exhibit B: Creighton Bluejays.

I had Creighton at No. 33 overall last Sunday, top of the No. 9 seed line. Yes, needing double overtime to survive DePaul was concerning, but they turned around and somewhat comfortably took care of business against Connecticut in the semifinals before a hard-fought loss to St. John's in the championship. (Final margin was 16, but that was close until the last 10-12 minutes.) Where does Creighton land? No. 33 overall. Two spots behind Connecticut, despite winning that rubber match.

Exhibit C: Louisville Cardinals.

I had Louisville at No. 29 overall last Sunday, top of the No. 8 seed line. They got a battle from Stanford in their first game but prevailed against No. 5 seed Clemson in their second game before putting up a decent fight against Duke. After the Clemson win, I scrubbed them up to a No. 7 seed. But where does Louisville land? You guessed it. No. 29 overall.

But there's also Exhibit D: Texas Longhorns.

They were fifth or sixth out for me to start the week, but picked up wins over Vanderbilt on Wednesday afternoon and Texas A&M on Thursday afternoon. That was enough for them to become my last team in, up until Colorado State became a bid thief and someone had to drop out. But they ended up fourth-to-last in for the selection committee.

Can't imagine they felt that strongly about the Longhorns prior to those games, but maybe that's the cut off: Dinner time on Thursday. All those other key results happened on Friday, and they didn't count for a damn thing. But the committee sure loved what Texas did while they were still relatively early in their deliberation process.

(Committee also had irrationally strong feelings about West Virginia's loss to Colorado on Wednesday, it seems.)

Can't wait until a team comfortably in the field just decides to not bother risking injury over the final three days of these meaningless jokes anymore.

Other Peccadillos of Note

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Beyond those three main rants, here are some other grievances:

Indiana Left Out

I don't have super strong feelings on this one. The Hoosiers were the second team out; they were my second-to-last team in. It wasn't a great resume. But they won at Michigan State, they beat Purdue, they swept Ohio State and, notably, they didn't suffer a single loss outside of Quad 1.

I felt the Hoosiers did more good than both Xavier and North Carolina (combined, frankly) and less bad than Texas, but the committee evidently disagreed. Can't help but wonder if the lame duck head coach situation played a factor in their decision, but that'd be cruelly unfair to those kids.

Arizona's second-round site/opponent

Top-four seeds are only protected from a geographical disadvantage in the first round. But the selection committee didn't have to do No. 4 Arizona dirty like that, with a projected second-round matchup with No. 5 Oregon in Seattle, that for the right to face Duke in Newark in the Sweet 16.

They could've easily swapped Oregon and Michigan along the No. 5 seed line to avoid the first part of that scenario.

Omaha Mavericks in a Steel Cage Match

There wasn't going to be a good situation for Omaha, which frankly could have been a No. 16 seed. But America's favorite trash can smashing goofballs got sent to a pod where the other three coaches are Rick Pitino, Bill Self and John Calipari.

This Mavericks program has 178 wins at the D-I level. Those three coaches have won a combined 168 NCAA tournament games.

At least it'll be one hell of a Cinderella story if it happens.

Mountain West, Per Usual

The league got four teams in, which is great. It's more than anyone reasonably thought it deserved until recently. But New Mexico and Utah State are both No. 10 seeds, San Diego State was the second-to-last team in, drawing UNC in a First Four game and red-hot Colorado State got a No. 12 seed where it will draw a very good Memphis squad.

What else is new, though? MWC seeding wasn't as offensive as it was last season, but it's getting to the point where we might as well just automatically apply a "minus one seed line" nerf to all future Mountain West projections.

Wisconsin Badgers...not in Milwaukee?

Knowing full well who the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds were going to be, knowing the first/second-round sites those eight teams would prefer and assuming Wisconsin would land in the middle of the No. 3 seed line, it looked like a safe assumption that we'd end up with the Badgers heading to nearby Milwaukee.

Instead, they were at the bottom of the No. 3 seed line at No. 12 overall, with No. 10 Iowa State and No. 11 Kentucky snagging the two Milwaukee pods. Now, instead of practically being able to walk to their first weekend venue, they have to go deal with Montana and probably BYU in the Rocky Mountains. Yikes.

Houston gets a No. 1 seed...and a top-10 team in the second round

Pretty much no matter where Gonzaga landed, it was going to feel brutally unfair to its first-round and second-round opponents. All the predictive metrics say the Zags are a top-10 team, but they didn't have the results to back it up.

Thought for sure Gonzaga would at least get a No. 7 seed, and that the committee would match them up with the bottom No. 2 seed, whether that was Michigan State or St. John's. But it's going to be Houston likely dealing with Ryan Nembhard and Graham Ike just to get to a Sweet 16. (The committee did at least gift Houston what I consider the weakest No. 4 and No. 5 seeds as an apology.)