The NCAA Selection Committee is Higher on Kentucky Than You Might Think

Only three Sundays stand between college basketball fans and Selection Sunday. Before the Selection Committee convenes to create the final bracket for the 2026 NCAA Tournament, they’re shedding a little light on the process.

On Saturday, CBS will host the NCAA Tournament Bracket Preview at 12:30 PM ET, unveiling the Top 16 seeds as if the Madness started on that day. The teaser is one of a few ways the Committee tries to get the sport to brace for impact. They took another step on Thursday.

Each year, the NCAA invites members of the media to Indianapolis to attend a mock selection. It’s designed to illustrate the processes the Selection Committee uses to create the beloved bracket. By giving the media a guide to how the sausage is made, it should illuminate the college basketball audience, and deter criticism.

During this exercise, the folks inside the mock Selection Committee were tasked to decide if Miami (Oh) should receive an at-large bid if they lost in the MAC Tournament Title Game. The Redhawks made the cut.

Media members voted to determine which bubble teams were in and which ones were out. They also seeded the top teams before producing one big, beautiful bracket. Behold! An image of the illustration, as shared by Matt Norlander of CBS Sports.

It’s hard to see, but if you zoom in closely, you will find Kentucky as a No. 6 seed, playing against Tulsa in Oklahoma City, which is less than a 2-hour drive from the home of the Golden Hurricane. However, there’s a catch.

This mock Selection Committee only tasked the media to determine the Top 20 teams in the NCAA Tournament. After determining who earned seeds 1-5, the NCAA auto-filled the overall seed list from 21-68, which is where Kentucky falls.

Joe Lunardi had Kentucky as the No. 6 in Oklahoma City prior to the Wildcats’ Quad 2 loss to Georgia. In the Bracket Matrix, which averages every bracketologist on the internet, Kentucky is the final No. 6 seed. It’s safe to say that the Wildcats have some work to do over the next month to have a 6 next to their name on Selection Sunday.

An Important Metric for the Selection Committee

A popular refrain around BBN after the Georgia loss is, “This team isn’t even going to make the tournament.” That is obviously a stretch.

The Selection Committee uses a variety of tools to determine where a team falls in the NCAA Tournament pecking order. A new metric was introduced last year, “Wins Above Bubble.” Known simply in the room as WAB, CBS says the tool “is unaffected by victory margin and simply measures what you’ve accomplished against your schedule vs. what the average bubble team would have accomplished against the same schedule.”

NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt made it a point to emphasize this during the process. Kentucky ranks No. 26 in WAB with a 3.03 rating. I cannot tell you exactly what it means, but it sounds like the Wildcats are in a better position with the Selection Committee than most may think.

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