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How March Madness teams are picked, and what changes in 2027

By Vivek Tanna ·

The men's NCAA tournament is getting bigger. Starting in 2027, the field grows from 68 teams to 76, the First Four is replaced by a 12-game Opening Round, and the bubble gets wider. The NCAA approved the change on May 7, 2026. Most of the selection process stays the same. Here is how it works, with the new parts marked.

The 2027 dates

Two ways in: automatic bids and at-large bids

Every Division I conference gets one automatic bid. In almost every league that bid goes to the conference tournament champion, which is why a team with a mediocre record can win three or four games in a week in March and end up in the bracket. The rest of the field is made up of at-large teams, picked by the 12-member Division I men's basketball committee. There is no limit on how many at-large teams can come from one conference.

In the 68-team format the committee picked 37 at-large teams. A 76-team field adds eight more spots, and the NCAA has said the field will be an automatic qualifier from each conference plus the best at-large teams. If the number of conferences holds steady, that works out to about 45 at-large bids.

How the committee chooses

The selection is done by secret ballot over several days. Each member starts with a ballot of teams they think belong in the field and teams that deserve a look. Teams with near-unanimous support go straight in. Everyone else lands on an "under consideration" board, and the committee votes in rounds, adding a few teams at a time, until every at-large spot is filled.

The committee's main sorting tool is the NET, the NCAA Evaluation Tool. It combines a results-based piece that rewards beating good teams, especially away from home, with an efficiency rating adjusted for opponent and location. Each game on a team's record is then sorted into a quadrant based on the opponent's NET rank and where the game was played. A Quadrant 1 game is a home game against a top-30 team, a neutral-site game against a top-50 team, or a road game against a top-75 team. Quadrant 4 is the other end: games against the weakest teams in the country.

Those quadrants show up on the team sheet, the one-page summary the committee looks at for every contender. Quadrant 1 wins help the most. Losses in Quadrants 3 and 4 hurt the most. The committee also weighs strength of schedule, road record and other computer rankings, but the team sheet is where bubble debates start.

One thing fans miss: quadrants move. A home win over a team ranked 28th in December is a Quadrant 1 win until that team drops out of the top 30. Nothing is locked until the conference tournaments are over.

The Opening Round replaces the First Four

Under the old format, eight teams played four games in Dayton: the last four at-large teams and the four lowest-seeded automatic qualifiers. In 2027, 24 teams play 12 games. The 12 lowest-seeded automatic qualifiers play six of them, and the 12 lowest-seeded at-large teams play the other six. Teams are paired with the team next to them on the committee's seed list, so the last two at-large teams in the field could meet each other. The 12 winners join the 52 teams already in the round of 64, which still tips off Thursday and Friday.

Seeding and building the bracket

After selection, the committee ranks every team in the field from best to worst. That seed list sets the four No. 1 seeds, the four No. 2s, and so on. The overall No. 1 seed gets first choice of region and early-round site. Then the committee places teams using a set of bracketing principles, including:

The NCAA has said the committee will keep applying the same principles to the 76-team bracket, including avoiding same-conference matchups in the Opening Round and round of 64 when possible. The NCAA said the full 2026-27 bracketing procedures would be shared later. Until then, the 68-team rules above are the best guide.

Which games matter before Selection Sunday

Bubble games. From February on, the most important games for the bracket are often not the ones between the best teams. They are games between two teams fighting for the last at-large spots, or a bubble team's road trip to a Quadrant 1 opponent. One of those wins can be the difference between a bid and the NIT. With 12 at-large teams now going to the Opening Round, there is also a new line to watch: the gap between playing Tuesday and playing Thursday.

Conference tournaments. The week before Selection Sunday, every league crowns its champion. For one-bid leagues, the conference tournament is the whole season. Lose the semifinal and the year is over, which is why these games are some of the tensest of the year.

Bid thieves. When a team that was never getting an at-large bid wins its conference tournament, it takes that league's automatic bid. If the regular-season champion was good enough to get in anyway, the league now sends two teams, and the at-large pool shrinks by one. Every bid thief knocks a bubble team out.

The women's tournament

The women's tournament grows to 76 teams in 2027 too, and Selection Sunday is the same day, March 14. Its Opening Round runs Wednesday and Thursday, March 17 and 18, on the home courts of 12 of the top 16 seeds. Regionals are in Philadelphia and Las Vegas, and the Final Four is April 2 and 4 at Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio.

What we've seen so far

The season is a week old, but it already had a night that will show up on team sheets in March. On Tuesday, November 10, the No. 2 and No. 3 teams in the country both lost:

None of these were close at the end. They ranked high because of who was playing and what was at stake. That is what early-season college basketball looks like for us: the best watches are ranked matchups, and the close finishes come later.

How The Lineup Is treats these games

Rankings matter most in November, since a top-five matchup starts from a higher floor than a game between unranked teams. In March, Tournament and Elimination take over: conference tournaments and the NCAA bracket carry their own weight, and win-or-go-home changes everything. If you follow a team, you get an alert when its game is within 6 points in the last 3 minutes of the second half, or goes to overtime. Every night's ranked list is on our college basketball page.

Sources: NCAA.org, "NCAA reveals new 76-team bracket for DI men's and women's basketball championships" (May 7, 2026); NCAA.com, "2027 Selection Sunday: Date, schedule, TV times" (Aug. 12, 2026), "How the field of 76 DI men's teams is picked" (May 7, 2026), "College basketball's NET rankings, explained," and Final Four future sites. All checked November 11, 2026.

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