Latest 2026 Men's NCAA Tournament Bracket Projections

While Arizona, Iowa State, Nebraska, Vanderbilt and even Miami-Ohio continued their quests for an undefeated season, the Michigan Wolverines suffered their first loss of the 2025-26 men's college basketball season, shaking up the race for the No. 1 seeds for the first time in a little while.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the seeding spectrum, St. John's, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Texas A&M, Missouri and NC State all moved into the projected field while Kentucky, Indiana, Baylor, LSU, TCU and VCU exited stage left.

Such is life now that we are knees deep in conference play. Some teams are capitalizing on their opportunities to make big statements, while others are making much different statements with their repeated shortcomings.

In our latest forecast of the 2026 NCAA tournament field, projected auto bids from each of the 31 conferences are based on conference record. In cases where there is a tie atop the league standings, the tied team with the best average rank among the six team sheet metrics—KPI, SOR, WAB, BPI, KenPom and Torvik—gets the nod.

With that out of the way, let's start with the full bracket before some commentary on the current state of the bubble and the top seed line. Following that, we have a full conference-by-conference rundown, highlighting some of the biggest changes from one week ago.

The Projected Bracket

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East Region (Washington, D.C.)

St. Louis, MO
No. 1 Vanderbilt vs. No. 16 UMass Lowell / NC Central
No. 8 USC vs. No. 9 Oklahoma State

San Diego, CA
No. 4 Texas Tech vs. No. 13 Utah Valley
No. 5 Arkansas vs. No. 12 High Point

Philadelphia, PA
No. 3 Michigan State vs. No. 14 Portland State
No. 6 Kansas vs. No. 11 Iowa / Texas A&M

Philadelphia, PA
No. 2 Connecticut vs. No. 15 Wright State
No. 7 Georgia vs. No. 10 Stanford

Midwest Region (Chicago)

Oklahoma City, OK
No. 1 Nebraska vs. No. 16 Dartmouth / Arkansas-Pine Bluff
No. 8 Saint Louis vs. No. 9 UCF

Tampa, FL
No. 4 Alabama vs. No. 13 UNC-Wilmington
No. 5 Clemson vs. No. 12 Liberty

Oklahoma City, OK
No. 3 Houston vs. No. 14 East Tennessee State
No. 6 Tennessee vs. No. 11 George Mason

Greenville, SC
No. 2 Duke vs. No. 15 Long Island
No. 7 St. John's vs. No. 10 Wisconsin

South Region (Houston)

St. Louis, MO
No. 1 Iowa State vs. No. 16 Southern Miss
No. 8 Seton Hall vs. No. 9 Auburn

Greenville, SC
No. 4 Illinois vs. No. 13 UC Irvine
No. 5 Virginia vs. No. 12 Miami-Ohio

Portland, OR
No. 3 BYU vs. No. 14 North Dakota State
No. 6 Utah State vs. No. 11 Missouri / NC State

Buffalo, NY
No. 2 Michigan vs. No. 15 Tennessee-Martin
No. 7 SMU vs. No. 10 New Mexico

West Region (San Jose)

San Diego, CA
No. 1 Arizona vs. No. 16 Merrimack
No. 8 Saint Mary's vs. No. 9 Miami-Florida

Tampa, FL
No. 4 North Carolina vs. No. 13 Temple
No. 5 Florida vs. No. 12 Murray State

Portland, OR
No. 3 Gonzaga vs. No. 14 Austin Peay
No. 6 Louisville vs. No. 11 McNeese

Buffalo, NY
No. 2 Purdue vs. No. 15 Navy
No. 7 Villanova vs. No. 10 Virginia Tech

Ranking the No. 1 Seeds

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Vanderbilt's Duke Miles

1. Arizona Wildcats (16-0, NET: 2, RES: 3.0, QUAL: 2.0)
2. Iowa State Cyclones (16-0, NET: 3, RES: 6.0, QUAL: 4.7)
3. Nebraska Cornhuskers (16-0, NET: 11, RES: 2.3, QUAL: 19.7)
4. Vanderbilt Commodores (16-0, NET: 7, RES: 4.3, QUAL: 7.0)
5. Connecticut Huskies (16-1, NET: 8, RES: 4.0, QUAL: 7.7)
6. Duke Blue Devils (15-1, NET: 4, RES: 5.3, QUAL: 7.7)
7. Michigan Wolverines (14-1, NET: 1, RES: 5.7, QUAL: 1.7)
8. Purdue Boilermakers (15-1, NET: 5, RES: 6.0, QUAL: 5.3)

The jaw-dropping development of the week was Michigan's sudden affliction of mortality. After a 10-game stretch in which the average final score was 98.4 to 63.9, the Wolverines barely survived against Penn State before falling at home to Wisconsin.

As a result of that stunning upset, there are four undefeated power conference teams still standing: Arizona, Iowa State, Nebraska and Vanderbilt.

Not only are those teams undefeated, but they are each 5-0 against Quad 1, as well as 9-0 against the top two Quads. Duke is the only team with more Quad 1 wins (seven), and no one has more than nine wins against the top two Quads.

So, why not just put those unblemished records onto the top seed line?

Cases certainly could be made for any of Michigan (still No. 1 overall in several metrics), Duke (the seven Quad 1 wins) or Connecticut (four Quad 1A wins and nine total wins vs. Q1/Q2) to be seeded ahead of Vanderbilt, Nebraska and maybe even Iowa State. But it is a relatively clear-cut top seven at the moment, and we're putting the undefeateds atop that top tier until they give us a reason to give them the boot.

As far as the pecking order of the undefeateds is concerned, Arizona indisputably has the best overall resume, Iowa State had the biggest statement win (by 23 at Purdue) and Nebraska's collection of upper-echelon victories (at Illinois, vs. Michigan State, at Indiana, at Ohio State) is simply more impressive than Vanderbilt's.

10 Words on Each of the 10 'Bubbliest' Teams

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Kentucky's Otega Oweh

Fifth-to-Last In: New Mexico Lobos (13-3, NET: 41, RES: 39.3, QUAL: 53.3)—Win at Colorado State pushed Lobos over the proverbial hump.

Fourth-to-Last In: Iowa Hawkeyes (12-4, NET: 20, RES: 46.7, QUAL: 23.7)—No Quad 1 wins, and now has loss at Minnesota.

Third-to-Last In: Texas A&M Aggies (13-3, NET: 43, RES: 41.7, QUAL: 37.3)—One of just two teams still undefeated in SEC play.

Second-to-Last In: Missouri Tigers (12-4, NET: 76, RES: 50.7, QUAL: 54.3)—Out of nowhere, the Tigers have two Quad 1A wins.

Last Team In: NC State Wolfpack (12-5, NET: 31, RES: 45.0, QUAL: 25.3)—Winless vs. Quad 1 opponents; undefeated outside of Quad 1.

***Cut Line***

First Team Out: Kentucky Wildcats (10-6, NET: 35, RES: 56.7, QUAL: 26.7)—Home loss to Missouri knocked Wildcats out of the field.

Second Team Out: Indiana Hoosiers (12-4, NET: 34, RES: 49.0, QUAL: 21.3)—Still waiting on them to get a win worth mentioning.

Third Team Out: San Diego State Aztecs (11-4, NET: 65, RES: 54.3, QUAL: 59.3)—Eight wins in nine games has Aztecs back in mix.

Fourth Team Out: Ohio State Buckeyes (11-5, NET: 39, RES: 50.0, QUAL: 37.7)—Split with Oregon and Washington; forever teetering on the bubble.

Fifth Team Out: Baylor Bears (10-5, NET: 49, RES: 66.0, QUAL: 46.7)—Whiffed on big home chances against Iowa State and Houston.

ACC Summary

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California's Dai Dai Ames

10 Teams in the Projected Field: 6. Duke, 14. North Carolina, 17. Virginia, 20. Clemson, 22. Louisville, 25. SMU, 36. Miami, 37. Virginia Tech, 39. Stanford, 45. NC State

Also Considered: N/A

Biggest Development: Bon Voyage, Golden Bears

Thanks to a 12-1 start to the season that included a win over UCLA, California temporarily landed in the projected field for a lot of bracketologists (including yours truly) during the week of Christmas.

But there was always a strong possibility that January was going to flip the script in a big way, as the Golden Bears were projected to lose six of their first seven ACC games.

Thus far, they have stuck to those projections, pummeled at home by Louisville, smoked by 24 at Virginia, losing a close one at Virginia Tech and winning quite controversially at home against Notre Dame. Failing to win either game in Virginia this past week pushed them from "not quite in the field" to "not worth considering."

Here's the good/bad news, though: Cal gets both Duke and North Carolina at home this week, hosting the former on Wednesday and the latter on Saturday.

Win either of those games and they become at least a little more palatable in the at-large conversation.

Win both games and the Golden Bears would surely catapult back into the projected field.

But lose both games and we can probably write this team off for good. That win over UCLA doesn't look anywhere near as impressive as it did at the time, and Cal won't face any of Duke, North Carolina, Louisville or Virginia again this season. As such, they would darn near need to win every game left on the regular-season schedule in order to build up a compelling case.

So, you know, no pressure against the ACC overlords?

Big 12 Summary

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Baylor's Tounde Yessoufou

8 Teams in the Projected Field: 1. Arizona, 2. Iowa State, 10. BYU, 11. Houston, 15. Texas Tech, 21. Kansas, 33. UCF, 35. Oklahoma State

Also Considered: Arizona State, Baylor, TCU

Biggest Development: Bye Bye, Baylor

Generally speaking, losing at home to a projected No. 1 seed and a projected No. 3 seed isn't a problematic week. Missed opportunities for sure, but hardly grounds for moving what had been a projected No. 10 seed out of the field altogether.

With Baylor, though, we needed to see something positive in those games against Iowa State and Houston, and the Bears instead lost both by double digits, shooting a combined 22-for-57 (39 percent) inside the arc and 35-for-60 (58 percent) from the free-throw line.

Baylor previously lost at Memphis and at TCU, neither of which is presently in the projected field. And its only three wins worth mentioning—Creighton and San Diego State in Las Vegas; vs. Washington—also came against teams not projected to dance.

As a result, the Bears no longer rank top 40 in any metric and find themselves a bit up a creek without a paddle. They're already 0-3 in Big 12 play, and that easily could turn into 0-6 in the next eight days, playing at Oklahoma State and Kansas before hosting Texas Tech next Tuesday.

Though they do still have home games against Arizona and BYU, road games against Houston and Iowa State and a random "neutral" game in Fort Worth against Louisville on Valentine's Day, this next week feels like a 'now or never' situation.

Big East Summary

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St. John's Oziyah Sellers

4 Teams in the Projected Field: 5. Connecticut, 27. Villanova, 28. St. John's, 32. Seton Hall

Also Considered: Creighton

Biggest Development: Welcome Back, Johnnies

Save for Michigan's stunning home loss to Wisconsin, the most noteworthy development of the past week was St. John's picking up not one, but two Quad 1 wins, both of them in convincing fashion.

Granted, we're talking Quad 1B victories over teams not projected to dance, winning at Butler by 14 and at Creighton by 17. Those are great resume wins, but not exactly a one-two punch that suddenly makes it feel like the Red Storm are back in the mix for a national championship.

There is one thing to note with those wins, though: 35 assists against 11 turnovers, with nine of those dimes coming from Oziyah Sellers.

In their previous three losses to Auburn, Kentucky and Providence, St. John's had a combined total of 36 assists and 38 giveaways, the lack of anything close to a true point guard serving as their undoing in each contest.

Could Sellers become the lead guard this roster has been lacking? Or was it just an unusual week in which the Johnnies took advantage of two of the least turnover-forcing offenses in the Big East?

Either way, they've rocketed back into the projected field in a huge way, going from our Second Team Out one week ago to now our final No. 7 seed. And if they can win at Villanova on Saturday, St. John's will be right back where it started the season as the top challenger to UConn.

Big Ten Summary

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Wisconsin's Nick Boyd

8 Teams in the Projected Field: 3. Nebraska, 7. Michigan, 8. Purdue, 12. Michigan State, 13. Illinois, 29. USC, 38. Wisconsin, 41. Iowa

Also Considered: Ohio State, Indiana

Biggest Development: Wisconsin Upsets Michigan

Nebraska improved to 16-0 with a road win over Indiana, climbing up to a projected No. 1 seed.

Iowa took a bad loss at Minnesota and missed an opportunity at home against Illinois and plummeted four seed lines onto the bubble.

Ohio State lost at Washington and dropped back out of the projected field.

But the Big Ten's biggest development was clearly Michigan falling from the ranks of the undefeateds with a home loss to Wisconsin.

At this point, our projected top 10 overall seeds have gone a combined 156-6. Four of those losses—BYU vs. UConn, UConn vs. Arizona, Purdue vs. Iowa State and Gonzaga vs. Michigan—were cases of a top 10 team losing to a fellow top 10 team. One was Duke's neutral-site loss to a Texas Tech team that is presently penciled in as a No. 4 seed. And the other was Michigan's home loss to Wisconsin, which is the least forgivable of the bunch, by far.

Combine that with the fact that Michigan only has one win—granted, it was a 40-point drubbing of Gonzaga—over a projected top 25 overall seed and that one loss bumped the Wolverines from No. 1 overall to the middle of the No. 2 seed line.

That isn't to say we're suddenly worried about Michigan's staying power or anything, and the Wolverines will have six more chances during the regular season to prove their mettle against opponents presently in our top 13 overall. It's just an incredibly crowded race for the No. 1 seeds at the moment.

Bigger than what the loss did to Michigan's resume, though, is what the win did to Wisconsin's.

The Badgers weren't even an "also considered" team one week ago, fresh off the 16-point loss to Purdue that brought them to 9-5 overall. They had an 0-5 record against Quad 1 and just one Quad 2 win over Providence in San Diego. But in addition to that mammoth road win over Michigan, they also scored a Quad 2 home win over UCLA.

Not only are they back in the field, but that was a week that enabled the Badgers to vault straight past the "last five in, first five out" mix to a projected No. 10 seed. (Now, let's see if they can fare better than both Indiana and Iowa by winning at Minnesota on Tuesday night.)

SEC Summary

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Texas A&M's Rashaun Agee

9 Teams in the Projected Field: 4. Vanderbilt, 16. Alabama, 18. Florida, 19. Arkansas, 24. Tennessee, 26. Georgia, 34. Auburn, 42. Texas A&M, 44. Missouri

Also Considered: Kentucky, LSU

Biggest Development: Bucky Ball Making Some Noise

Early returns on the Bucky McMillan era at Texas A&M were less than promising. The Aggies started out 7-3 with nothing close to a quality win, a 24-point blowout loss at Oklahoma State, a 12-point home loss to UCF and an overtime loss (by 13) against SMU.

When news broke in late December that Mackenzie Mgbako would be missing the rest of the season to a foot injury, A&M finishing dead last in the SEC felt like a real possibility.

Lo and behold, Vanderbilt and these Aggies are the only two teams in the league to start out 3-0, with Texas A&M sandwiching a road win over Auburn in between home wins over LSU and Oklahoma.

All three games were mighty close. The Aggies trailed with less than three minutes remaining against LSU, trailed with less than seven minutes left against Oklahoma and appeared to have lost at the buzzer to Auburn. As such, their predictive metrics haven't changed all that much, but the resume metrics have improved in a big way for a team that now ranks top 50 across the board and that now resides in our projected field.

Also adding key wins this past week was the reigning national champion.

Florida was a bit of a conundrum one week ago, with a resume metrics average of 49.0 while the predictive metrics painted the Gators as a top 15 team. But following convincing Quad 1 home wins over both Georgia and Tennessee, Florida is up to 31.0 in the resume metrics and back up to a projected No. 5 seed in advance of Saturday's ginormous showdown with Vanderbilt.

Mid-Majors Summary (A10, AAC, MVC, MWC, WCC)

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George Mason's Kory Mincy

8 Teams in the Projected Field: 9. Gonzaga, 21. Utah State, 30. Saint Mary's, 31. Saint Louis, 40. New Mexico, 43. George Mason, 48. Murray State, 54. Temple

Also Considered: San Diego State, Nevada

Biggest Development: George Mason Might Be for Real

About six weeks ago, I popped over to EagleBank Arena to write about George Mason's historic 9-0 start in what just so happens to be the 20-year anniversary of its run to the 2006 Final Four. But let's just say I made sure to get that published in early December, because with nary a top 100 win to their credit, it was far from a sure thing we'd still be talking about the Patriots in January.

After Saturday's home win over VCU, though, GMU is sitting at 16-1 with a somewhat forgivable, Quad 1 loss at Virginia Tech as its only blemish, starting to look like more than just a team that we need to discuss simply because of its minimal losses.

The predictive metrics still aren't much buying what the Patriots are selling, 68th in NET, 72nd on BPI, 75th on KenPom and 100th on Torvik. But as far as the resume metrics are concerned, George Mason and Tennessee (coincidentally matched up as first-round opponents in this week's projection) are identical twins with an average rank of 38.3, even though GMU is still searching for its first truly marquee win.

Will enough coin flips land in Mason's favor, though?

Per KenPom, there are seven games in which the Patriots have between a 35 and 65 percent chance of victory, including the home game against George Washington this Monday. (There's also a rematch at VCU in early March, which Mason is given just a 29 percent chance of winning.)

If they win five of those eight games while otherwise holding serve in the games they really ought to win, the Patriots are going to have a near impenetrable case for a bid.

Other 21 Leagues Summary

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Yale's Nick Townsend

21 Teams in the Projected Field: 46. McNeese, 47. Miami-Ohio, 49. Liberty, 50. High Point, 51. Utah Valley, 52. UNC-Wilmington, 53. UC Irvine, 55. East Tennessee State, 56. North Dakota State, 57. Austin Peay, 58. Portland State, 59. Wright State, 60. Navy, 61. Tennessee-Martin, 62. Long Island, 63. Southern Miss, 64. Merrimack, 65. Dartmouth, 66. Arkansas-Pine Bluff, 67. UMass Lowell, 68. North Carolina Central

Also Considered: N/A

Biggest Development: Yale pummeled by Princeton

For the first time all season, Yale is no longer the projected Ivy League auto bid.

The Bulldogs do still have the league's best metrics across the board, but they are no longer atop the league standings after a nightmarish Saturday afternoon in New Jersey.

What was a 36-36 tie with 10 minutes remaining devolved into a 76-60 blowout as Princeton all but refused to have an empty possession down the stretch. Yale grabbed just one defensive rebound and forced two turnovers as the Tigers scored 40 points in the second half of the second half.

Yale was always going to be in an "auto bid or bust" situation, and still would be the clear betting favorite if the Ivy League tournament began today. All the same, the Bulldogs' temporary absence from the projected field does considerably change the outlook for this tier of teams, as it is now Dartmouth projected for a No. 16 seed play-in game instead of Yale projected for a No. 12 seed.

Elsewhere, shoutout to Miami-Ohio for another week of perfection. The RedHawks improved to 17-0 with a home win over Western Michigan and a road win over Toledo. Between the two games, they shot 43-for-60 (71.7 percent) from inside the arc. They also hit a dozen triples against the Rockets, remaining one of the better shooting teams in the country.

Like both Arizona and Vanderbilt, Miami-Ohio is not projected to lose any particular game the rest of the way, and the possibility of an undefeated regular season is slowly but surely becoming a realistic goal.