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You can’t say they didn’t get enough chances. North Carolina lost to Duke for the third time this season in heartbreaking fashion. It is also their twelfth Quad 1 loss in thirteen games. The Tar Heels also have a Quad 3 loss at home to Stanford. That means the Tar Heels will miss the NCAA Tournament for the second time in the last three seasons.
No team with just one Quad 1 win has made the tournament with more than six losses since the term quadrant was introduced in 2017. (NC State got a bid in 2023 with a 1-6 Quad 1 record.) Before that, a team’s schedule was divided into four buckets like it is now, but the definitions were not complicated enough to call them something else.
Another team that I believe will miss the field because of simply too many losses is Texas. The Longhorns are 19-15 overall, which is not great, but teams get in at four games above .500 routinely. What makes the Longhorns different is that they are just 12-15 against the top three quadrants. No team has ever received an at-large bid three games below .500 against that group of teams. Only one has made it with a record of two games below .500. That was Temple in 2016 — again, before the term quadrant was introduced. The Owls were 8-10 in that department.
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That said, I do not believe the selection committee looks specifically at record in Quad 1-3 games. I also don’t think that it is a coincidence that every résumé of that quality has not been good enough in ways that are typically evaluated.
Bracketology top seeds
Check out Palm’s bracket and full field of 68 at the Bracketology hub.
Xavier dropped out of the bracket this morning because Colorado State was added. The Rams are the top seed remaining in the Mountain West Tournament. They are not likely to get an at-large bid if they lose tonight in the conference championship game, so this is a potential bid-stealer situation.
The only other one in the remaining conference tournaments is out of the American Athletic Conference. Memphis is an at-large team regardless of what happens. If another team steps up and wins that league, someone else falls off the bottom of the bracket. In my bracket, that is San Diego State.
Finally, the top of the bracket is all but set. I believe that Auburn, Duke and Houston will be the top three teams in that order. If Auburn wins the SEC title, Michigan State could have an outside chance at the fourth No. 1 seed. It would help the Spartans if Florida lost its SEC semifinal game. The Gators are the best candidate of the three SEC teams chasing that spot, and I don’t think Michigan State can catch them if they win today.
