Could a Team Earn a Bid to the NCAA Tournament Without Qualifying for Their Conference Tournament?

How many losses are too many?

Big L (& Half a Mil)

With conference realignment over the past couple of seasons, we’ve seen both an expansion in the number of teams and an increase in the competitors in conference tournaments. This has led to some conferences hosting massive 15-game events over five days, while others—such as the ACC and Big Ten—now restrict bottom-ranked teams from participating. With both conferences now sitting at 18 teams, they’ve opted to allow only 15 teams into their tournaments for the first time since expansion.

In contrast, conferences like the Ivy League, MAC, and Southland have long excluded some teams from their postseason events. While this can be disappointing for teams plagued by bad injury luck, the broader perspective reveals a greater potential for impactful exclusion in larger conferences. For example, consider a struggling Rutgers program with two standout freshmen navigating the Big Ten’s experienced rosters. This raises an intriguing question: could a team qualify for the NCAA Tournament via an at-large bid despite missing their conference tournament?

Simulation Swarm

Though unlikely given the hierarchy of high-major conferences, this scenario isn’t entirely implausible. Boston College, Georgia Tech, or Minnesota may not be realistic candidates to achieve this feat in 2025, but hypothetically, the possibility warrants exploration. Given the shared structure of the ACC and Big Ten—18 teams, 20 conference games—we can model potential scenarios using agreed-upon metrics. To evaluate, we need to determine the likely record of a team missing its conference tournament. While perfect parity would see every team finish 10-10, real-world results don’t work this way. Simulations modeled around normal distribution offer insights, though historical data limitations temper their precision.

Above, we have the distribution of the Big Ten’s 20-game conference schedule era, which began in 2018. The 2021 season was omitted due to numerous canceled games, leaving gaps in historical data. One key challenge in this analysis is the lack of precedent, as the Big Ten operated with only 14 teams until this most recent season. Additionally, the distribution deviates from normality, introducing imperfections into the simulations built on its assumptions.

With the addition of more teams and no increase in conference games, the likelihood of teams facing each other twice in a season diminishes. This change introduces greater parity—a feature that benefits this analysis. Single matchups inject more randomness into outcomes, reducing the frequency of extreme records at both ends of the spectrum. As a result, dominant seasons by elite teams should become less common, leading to fewer runaway records in either direction.

With this context, a simulation was run in R to predict the conference records of teams likely to miss the tournament. While normal distribution is not an ideal framework for this type of analysis, the limited historical precedent restricts our ability to develop a more realistic model.

While we are focusing on the far ends of the normal distribution curve, certain outliers emerged in the simulation. For instance, while a 4-win, 16th-place team in the Big Ten or ACC aligns with expectations, the simulation occasionally returned third-from-last place teams winning six or seven games—albeit very rarely.

Unknown Death 2001

Before delving further into which teams need to be defeated and where losses might be acceptable, it’s helpful to consider historical precedent regarding loss volume. Take Georgia, for example, which made the NCAA Tournament with a 16-14 (9-7) record in 2001. Their 14th loss occurred in the first round of the SEC tournament, leaving them at 16-13 in regular-season play. Notably, the Bulldogs avoided any losses to teams outside the KenPom top 100, although three of their defeats were to teams ranked in the 80s. This included starting the season 0-2 with a home loss to Georgia State and a road loss to Minnesota, two teams that finished the season ranked 81st and 80th at KenPom, respectively.

Ezra Williams. Image per The Gainesville Sun

Georgia’s bid was earned in an era without the NET or other advanced metrics to contextualize resumes, and teams played two fewer regular-season games. Despite these differences, Georgia demonstrated that a team with 13 regular-season losses could still secure an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament.

If a team were to remain undefeated in non-conference play, they could theoretically sustain 13 losses and still make the tournament. However, this doesn’t account for the quality of the wins and losses. Would it be better to accumulate several strong wins or focus on avoiding bad losses? How many losses outside of the first two quadrants could a team realistically sustain? To answer these questions, we first examine the most challenging conference schedules in the Big Ten and ACC. A more difficult schedule reduces the likelihood of bad losses, as the competition is more competitive. By mid-January, Northwestern, in the deeper Big Ten conference, had the most difficult conference schedule, offering insight into how such scenarios might play out.

Screenshot per KenPom

Before determining which games will result in wins or losses within conference play, it’s essential to first address the team’s non-conference schedule. To realistically maintain an undefeated record outside of conference play, the team must face strong competition to build a credible resume. This requires constructing a challenging non-conference slate, using similar methodologies to identify the most competitive schedules for ACC or Big Ten programs.

Screenshots per Torvik

Simply sorting teams by non-conference strength of schedule isn’t the best way to identify the optimal schedule. This approach penalizes teams for playing weaker opponents, but our focus is on the volume of games against strong teams, assuming no losses in the non conference games. Therefore, we'll highlight the six wins from North Carolina’s non-conference schedule that fall in the first quadrant, while acknowledging (but not dwelling on) the inconsistency of Michigan State being both a conference and non-conference opponent. By combining the schedules of North Carolina and Northwestern, we arrive at the 32 games listed below (noting that playing a non-conference game at Hawai’i allows a team to schedule an additional game).

Subsequently, we have the quadrant count below with the merged schedules.

Note that quadrants are dynamic. Data of 1/19.

Perfect Tragedy

With no losses possible outside of quadrant four, this is a promising outlook. If the team only secures six or seven conference wins, the priority should be to avoid any losses outside the top two quadrants.

While the loss volume in quadrant two is concerning, a win in quadrant one should outweigh a loss in quadrant two. However, a 1-7 record in quadrant two would be unprecedented. Combining no losses in the top two quadrants with a strong number of quality road wins would make it extremely difficult for the selection committee to overlook this team.

Without considering computer rankings, a team that is 13-13 in the first two quadrants with no additional losses should be a tournament contender. A non-conference win over Auburn, combined with victories at Illinois, Michigan, and Purdue, should be enough to secure a spot. While the 13 losses are concerning, both Michigan State and Texas A&M qualified for the tournament the previous season with 13 regular-season losses. Even if we take a conservative approach and only expect six wins in conference play, removing a Q1-A victory still leaves 10 high-quality wins. This level of opportunity is unprecedented, with Purdue leading last season with nine Q1-A opportunities before the tournament.

To rephrase the original question: given the competitive nature of a high-major schedule, how few conference wins can a team have while still making the NCAA Tournament as an at-large team? Looking at historical precedent, especially recalling Georgia's 24-year-old case, 15 losses might be pushing the limit. However, a record of 17-15, with no bad losses and four games under .500 in the first two quadrants but 10 wins in the first quadrant, would make for one of the most compelling bubble cases we’ve seen.

-BM