The 2026 Hoops HD Selection Committee – Friday, March 13th

Friday the 13th brings us the second day of deliberations on the Hoops HD Selection Committee. Tonight our first order of business was to add 6 more teams to the at-large board. As we alluded to last night, there were three additional at-large spots guaranteed to open up since the ACC, Big 12 and Big Ten will not have any bids stolen. As the results of today’s games went final, we were also assured that a bid thief would not come out of the Big East, but the SEC still has a potential bid thief in Ole Miss after the Rebels’ win against Alabama.

There were 2 groups of 3 teams added; each Committee member voted for their top 8 teams to be added to the next round of voting with carryovers Mother Miami, Iowa and Santa Clara. After ranking the teams 1 through 8, the next 3 teams added were Iowa, Santa Clara and Texas A&M (?!?). The Redhawks had to go back to Under Consideration since they could not carry over for two consecutive rounds of voting. The process was repeated and the second wave of votes saw UCF, Saint Louis and Missouri added to the at-large board. The three carryover teams that will be considered for the final at-large spots will be Mother Miami, Texas and VCU (meaning that the VCU Rams had better win the A-10 auto bid in the eyes of our Selection Committee).

At this point, the process began in terms of seeding the field; each Committee member submitted a list of their top 12 teams to Chad (our chairman). The top 12 vote-getters were ranked 1 through 12; the top 8 teams would constitute the #1 and #2 seed lines in our field. (The real committee would seed the lines 1 at a time, but we go 2 lines at a time to speed up the process). We repeated the process for the 3 through 6 seed lines; the final task for the night was to do the 7-seed line only given the lack of teams on the board at the moment.

Tomorrow night, we will fill the final at-large spots that open up (including an SEC contingency depending on what Ole Miss does) and we will entertain potential motions to move teams off of the at-large board if necessary. I was not personally present and was horrified to see Texas A&M on our board, so an immediate motion to move them off the board will be made. This doesn’t necessarily mean they would be eliminated from the field if the motion passes, but they would move back to Under Consideration to be evaluated with Mother Miami, Texas, VCU, etc.

We will also fill the remaining seed lines and (time permitting) do a scrub of our overall seed list. Tune in tomorrow to see where the board stands after Saturday night’s championship games!