March Badness 2025, Top 16 Reveal

You might be surprised at the #1 overall seed...

You know March Badness: the bracket we at The Low Major have released for the past three seasons highlighting the very worst teams, metrics, and résumés in the country.

You know that today was the Selection Committee’s annual reveal of the top 16 seeds if the NCAA Tournament started today, a feature they’ve released every mid-February since 2017 to drum up interest as the average sports-watching American moves their attention from the NFL to college hoops.

You know that last year I debuted a combination of the two: a top 16 March Badness seed reveal checking in on the worst teams in Division I.

And now you know that the March Badness top 16 reveal is back for Year 2, because you are reading that piece right now.

Before the big reveal, let me remind y’all how this works.

What I looked at

In determining which teams were the worst of the worst, I considered the following metrics:

• KenPom: For each team, I looked at both their KenPom ranking (out of 364 Division I teams) and their Adjusted Efficiency Margin (AdjEM).

• WAB: Wins Above Bubble, a metric from Bart Torvik meant to simulate how humans view the quality of every win and loss. Each win is worth a maximum of 1 WAB and each loss is worth a minimum of -1 WAB. The bubble is supposed to be right around 0 WAB total. Beginning this year, this metric is now included on actual NCAA Tournament team sheets! Took ‘em long enough but March Badness was always ahead of the curve.

• WAB/gm: Because it’s midseason and some teams have played significantly different amounts of games, a counting stat like WAB is going to have major discrepancies, so I also considered each team’s average WAB per Division I game.

• NET: The NCAA Evaluation Tool used to sort teams into quadrants

• Quadrant records: The NET sorts results into quadrants based on the opponent’s spot in the ranking and the location of the game. Quadrant 1 consists of the hardest games and Quadrant 4 consists of the easiest. Under normal circumstances, you want to rack up higher quadrant wins and avoid lower quadrant losses. On this bracket, the opposite is true. For an example, and to show where the cutoffs for each quadrant are, here’s Minnesota’s ledger:

• Non-D1 record: Losing a game to an opponent who isn’t even in Division I will make your résumé look significantly worse and likely raise you at least one seed line on this bracket.

Keep in mind that all of these metrics are current through Friday, February 14. Some games on Saturday will have been completed before you read this, so the live numbers will certainly look slightly different.

In any case, I can use these metrics to narrow the pool from 364 Division I teams to only those worth considering for this exercise.

Establishing a baseline

Because I’m only out to determine the top 16 seeds, I only considered teams that are in the bottom 20 nationally in at least one of KenPom, WAB, or NET. Quite a few teams qualify in multiple of these metrics, so this whittled the list down to 30 bottomfeeders. Here they are in alphabetical order:

Air Force [Mountain West]
Alabama A&M [SWAC]
Arkansas–Pine Bluff [SWAC]
Bellarmine [ASUN]
Canisius [MAAC]
Central Arkansas [ASUN]
Chicago State [NEC]
Coppin State [MEAC]
East Texas A&M [Southland]
Green Bay [Horizon]
IU Indy [Horizon]
Le Moyne [NEC]
Maryland Eastern Shore [MEAC]
Mercyhurst [NEC]
Mississippi Valley State [SWAC]
New Hampshire [America East]
NJIT [America East]
North Carolina A&T [MEAC]
Northern Illinois [MAC]
Prairie View A&M [SWAC]
Sacramento State [Big Sky]
San Diego [WCC]
Stetson [ASUN]
Stony Brook [CAA]
The Citadel [SoCon]
ULM [Sun Belt]
USC Upstate [Big South]
Wagner [NEC]
West Georgia [ASUN]
Western Illinois [Ohio Valley]

This list is diverse; 17 of the 31 Division I conferences are represented here. But not all 30 of these teams are eligible for March Badness! Let’s review the eligibility rules and spare the teams that shouldn’t be here.

Ineligible teams

As with the NCAA Tournament, every team still transitioning from a lower division is ineligible for March Badness. We all know it’s bunk that St. Thomas has to wait two more seasons to compete for a bid, but that’s unfortunately just the way it is, so it doesn’t seem right to put them or any of the other transitioning teams on the same playing field as everyone else.

This eliminates the following teams:

• East Texas A&M

• Le Moyne

• Mercyhurst

• West Georgia

Next, let’s remove every team with a winning record in conference play. No matter how bad your fellow leaguemates are, if you’re beating them more than you’re not, you’ve proven in some sense that you’re not one of the very worst teams in the country.

This doesn’t eliminate any teams who weren’t already eliminated, but it does double-eliminate Mercyhurst, who sits at 7-6 in league play in their first year up from Division II. God bless the NEC.

In the full bracket reveal, I’ll also eliminate any team that makes it to their conference tournament championship game and disallow more than half of any given conference from being in the field. But it’s February, so we don’t have that information yet, and this is just a top-16 reveal, so it’s unlikely that any of these teams will be cut due to either of those rules.

That’s enough waffling about. We have 26 teams, er…fighting…for 16 spots. Let’s reveal our lucky winners!

The Top 16

Each seed line should be read from left to right.

1-seeds

1. MARYLAND EASTERN SHORE Hawks

   • 4-19 (0-7 MEAC)

   • #361 KenPom (-24.22 AdjEM)

   • -13.6 WAB (-.716 per game)

   • #362 NET

   • Quad records: 0-5 / 0-0 / 0-6 / 0-8

   • 4-0 outside Division I

You probably expected Mississippi Valley State to be here again, but don’t worry; we’ll get to them.

Instead, Maryland Eastern Shore holds the top overall seed, and that’s primarily for one reason: they’re the only team in the country that has yet to beat a fellow Division I team. They have four wins but all four of them have come against non-D1s.

Holistically, the Hawks’ résumé does not scream “worst in the country”. They have just eight Q4 losses whereas some contenders have as many as 14. Their -.716 WAB/gm is only the seventh worst in Division I. And efficiency-wise, though Maryland Eastern Shore is fourth from the bottom on KenPom, Mississippi Valley State blows them out of the water.

But if we just take this down to basics…it’s February 15 and Maryland Eastern Shore plays in what is undeniably a low major conference. If they haven’t won a Division I game under those conditions, they haven’t proven they don’t deserve the #1 overall seed.

2. THE CITADEL Bulldogs

   • 5-19 (0-13 SoCon)

   • #356 KenPom (-21.28 AdjEM)

   • -16.0 WAB (-.800 per game)

   • #360 NET

   • Quad records: 0-1 / 0-2 / 0-10 / 1-6

   • 4-0 outside Division I

Now here’s the worst résumé in the country. Just look at that ridiculous -.800 WAB per Division I game, which would have been the worst such figure in the 2024 March Badness field. And you can see from the quad records how that number got that low: they’re losing almost all of their games despite rarely ever playing any good teams.

The only reason The Citadel isn’t the #1 overall seed is because they’ve managed to notch a Division I win. It was a blowout, too: a 22-point home win over Stetson on November 11. The Bulldogs made it as high as #311 on KenPom following that win, but they then immediately tanked and have been chilling in the 350s since their 28-point home loss to Campbell on December 12.

3. MISSISSIPPI VALLEY STATE Delta Devils

   • 3-21 (1-10 SWAC)

   • #364 KenPom (-41.42 AdjEM)

   • -14.1 WAB (-.641 per game)

   • #364 NET

   • Quad records: 0-7 / 0-3 / 0-0 / 1-11

   • 2-0 outside Division I

Mississippi Valley State’s résumé really isn’t that bad. I mean, it’s bad—don’t get me wrong—but they also played the toughest non-conference schedule in the country, so it’s pretty much impossible for their overall résumé to be the worst of the worst. That -.641 WAB/gm is only the 17th worst of the 30 teams I considered, and the Delta Devils have played (and thus lost) more Q1 games than every other team in the pool.

Furthermore, not only have the Delta Devils won a Division I game, but it was even a road game: at Arkansas–Pine Bluff on February 1. Granted, Pine Bluff is a 2-seed in this reveal, but still, a road win is a road win, and it was their first since February 4, 2023.

The reason Mississippi Valley State is here, of course, is that absurd -41.42 AdjEM. That’s almost inconceivably bad. It’s the worst since 2013 Grambling, whose -46.10 is the worst in KenPom’s 29-year history and probably an unbreakable record. When you’re that inefficient, it doesn’t matter how many good teams you played in November. You’re a 1-seed, no doubt about it.

4. GREEN BAY Phoenix

   • 2-24 (0-15 Horizon)

   • #344 KenPom (-17.83 AdjEM)

   • -19.2 WAB (-.768 per game)

   • #345 NET

   • Quad records: 0-2 / 0-3 / 0-9 / 2-9

   • 0-1 outside Division I

I guess I’m writing about the Gottlieb team for the second time in two months. They’re 0-13 since I published that, which means they still haven’t won a game since November 19 against SIU Edwardsville. That and a road win over Western Illinois are their only victories on the season, D1 or otherwise.

About that: when I put this together last year, I noted that WAB excludes non-D1 games, but that’s not entirely accurate. WAB actually treats these games as a simple binary: +0 for a win, -1 for a loss. The Phoenix have played one game outside Division I—that infamous loss to “Nobody U” Michigan Tech—and it leads to a pretty funny quirk in the data. Because I’m still normalizing WAB by number of Division I games for convenience, Green Bay’s WAB/gm is lower than it “should” be—if you remove the -1 WAB they netted from the D2 loss, the number is -.728—but that works perfectly for this exercise in which I’m also penalizing non-D1 losses.

As it stands, Green Bay’s -19.2 WAB is the lowest in the country by a solid margin, and their -.768 WAB/gm is third lowest. Bad-not-horrific efficiency metrics, no doubt propped up a little by their relatively strong start to the season, keep the Phoenix from complete damnation, but they’ve still earned a 1-seed here.

2-seeds

5. BELLARMINE Knights

   • 3-23 (0-13 ASUN)

   • #353 KenPom (-19.50 AdjEM)

   • -18.5 WAB (-.771 per game)

   • #357 NET

   • Quad records: 0-2 / 0-3 / 0-5 / 1-13

   • 2-0 outside Division I

Congratulations to Bellarmine for finally becoming eligible for March Madness! Unfortunately for them, that means they’re also eligible for March Badness, and boy is their résumé bad: -18.5 WAB and -.771 WAB/gm are both second worst in the country.

Honestly, considering all metrics holistically, Bellarmine should probably be on the 1 line, but the four 1-seeds I did name are all outliers in one way or another: zero D1 wins, horrendous WAB/gm, impossibly bad AdjEM, and worst total WAB with the only non-D1 loss in the pool. Ergo, Bellarmine’s unquestionably awful ledger is only enough to make them king of the 2-seeds.

6. CANISIUS Golden Griffins

   • 2-22 (2-11 MAAC)

   • #357 KenPom (-22.03 AdjEM)

   • -17.8 WAB (-.742 per game)

   • #358 NET

   • Quad records: 0-2 / 0-2 / 0-4 / 2-14

   • 0-0 outside Division I

This is a textbook case of a program struggling to adjust to a new coach. Somewhat unfortunately for that coach, most fans already associate his name with badness: it’s Jim Christian in his first head coaching gig since Boston College fired him in 2021.

Canisius flunked their non-conference slate with most of their losses coming by double-digits, including a 71-point loss at Maryland. That’s somehow only the third largest margin of defeat in a D1 vs. D1 game this season, which is surprising because no game had broken 70 since 2020-21. When these cataclysmic defeats do happen, they’re almost invariably suffered by HBCUs, and this includes the top two margins of the current season: Mississippi Valley State has a 72-point loss at Missouri, and Maryland Eastern Shore has a 74-point loss at Arkansas. But those teams are at massive resource disadvantages and essentially fund their programs by keeling over in their buy games. MAAC schools should not be losing games by 70+ points. Ever.

7. ARKANSAS–PINE BLUFF Golden Lions

   • 4-20 (1-10 SWAC)

   • #363 KenPom (-26.88 AdjEM)

   • -15.1 WAB (-.686 per game)

   • #363 NET

   • Quad records: 0-5 / 0-0 / 0-1 / 2-14

   • 2-0 outside Division I

You’d expect any team that loses a home game to -41 AdjEM Mississippi Valley State to be pretty bad, and you’d be correct. Like their conference rival Delta Devils, Arkansas–Pine Bluff’s résumé has a pretty high floor on account of playing a gauntlet outside of SWAC play. But their terrible efficiency metrics—the worst in the country outside of Itta Bena—combine with that one inconceivable loss to place them firmly on the 2 line.

8. NORTHERN ILLINOIS Huskies

   • 5-19 (1-10 MAC)

   • #348 KenPom (-18.57 AdjEM)

   • -15.9 WAB (-.757 per game)

   • #354 NET

   • Quad records: 0-0 / 0-4 / 0-6 / 2-9

   • 3-0 outside Division I

Northern Illinois is so committed to avoiding good results that they haven’t played a single Q1 game all season. The closest they’ve got is a road loss to Bradley, who is #84 in NET (where the Q1 cutoff is #75). The only high major team the Huskies scheduled is DePaul. That should tell you all you need to know about their commitment to the bit.

Of course, you can give yourself as many bad-loss opportunities as you want, but you still need to lose the games if you want a high March Badness seed, and Northern Illinois has certainly lost the games. Their only two Division I wins on the season have come against Monmouth and Ball State, both Q4, both at home.

3-seeds

9. USC Upstate Spartans

   • 5-22 (1-11 Big South)

   • #338 KenPom (-17.04 AdjEM)

   • -17.5 WAB (-.729 per game)

   • #349 NET

   • Quad records: 0-2 / 0-2 / 0-8 / 2-10

   • 3-0 outside Division I

Here’s another bottoming-out in Year 1 of a new coaching regime. In his first season coaching a Division I team, Marty Richter has USC Upstate at their lowest KenPom ranking since they joined the Big South in 2018-19. The Spartans were a 13-seed in March Badness last year, so this isn’t that big a short-term decline, but the team finished with a record of 16-16 (10-8 Big South) just two years ago, so it’s pretty shocking that they’ve become this bad this quickly.

Richter appears to like running and gunning, as USC Upstate plays at the ninth fastest tempo in the country. This is historically not conducive to success for underdogs, as you generally want to reduce the number of possessions if you’re the weaker team. I say that to say that I expect the Spartans to be featured on these brackets for a while unless they suddenly start punching above their weight on the recruiting trail.

10. NEW HAMPSHIRE Wildcats

    • 6-20 (4-7 America East)

    • #359 KenPom (-22.33 AdjEM)

    • -16.8 WAB (-.700 per game)

    • #355 NET

    • Quad records: 0-2 / 0-0 / 0-8 / 4-10

    • 2-0 outside Division I

Relative to most other teams in this top 16, New Hampshire is a team on the rise. They didn’t win a Division I game until January 11, but they’ve won four since then, including a home-and-home sweep of conference foe UMBC.

But when the Wildcats were at their worst, they were competing for a 1-seed. Their non-conference slate was easy (257th in the country per KenPom) and they lost every game in it. Their KenPom ranking has fallen as low as #361 on multiple occasions over the course of the season. They’ll need more than a few Q4 wins to fall too low on the March Badness bracket.

11. COPPIN STATE Eagles

    • 4-18 (2-5 MEAC)

    • #362 KenPom (-25.35 AdjEM)

    • -13.4 WAB (-.638 per game)

    • #361 NET

    • Quad records: 0-3 / 0-5 / 0-2 / 3-8

    • 1-0 outside Division I

The 2024 March Badness champion is a virtual lock to defend their title come Selection Sunday. Coppin State isn’t too low in résumé metrics on account of playing their usual hard non-conference schedule. They also beat Navy for the second time in three years, which…is embarrassing for Navy. However, the Eagles’ efficiency is so bad that they naturally find themselves toward the top of the bracket.

That Maryland Eastern Shore lost to this team at home is more an indictment on them—a key piece of evidence that they deserve the #1 overall seed—than an accomplishment for Coppin State.

12. NJIT Highlanders

    • 5-21 (2-9 America East)

    • #352 KenPom (-19.16 AdjEM)

    • -17.5 WAB (-.700 per game)

    • #352 NET

    • Quad records: 0-1 / 0-2 / 0-8 / 4-10

    • 1-0 outside Division I

If I had a nickel for every America East team with -.700 WAB/gm, a 0-8 Q3 record, and a 4-10 Q4 record to be a 3-seed in this reveal…

In addition to having eerily similar résumés, NJIT and New Hampshire split their regular season series with each team winning the home game. The Highlanders are lower on the 3 line because their efficiency metrics are just a little better.

…NJIT also beat Navy, which might be a sign that Ed DeChellis is getting too old for this.

4-seeds

13. SACRAMENTO STATE Hornets

    • 6-19 (2-10 Big Sky)

    • #340 KenPom (-17.40 AdjEM)

    • -15.5 WAB (-.705 per game)

    • #342 NET

    • Quad records: 0-1 / 0-3 / 0-4 / 3-11

    • 3-0 outside Division I

Sacramento State must take major inspiration from Utah State, because—like the Aggies—they’re now on their fourth head coach in five years. Unfortunately for the Hornets, the circumstances surrounding their coaching turbulence are different from Utah State’s; the Aggies keep getting their guys poached because they’re so good whereas Sacramento State had a late-offseason retirement and a one-year interim.

It’s hard to build a consistent program identity without a consistent leader, and this first season under Michael Czepil (in his first Division I job) has been proof positive. If the season ended today, Sacramento State’s #340 KenPom ranking would be their lowest of all time.

14. ALABAMA A&M Bulldogs

    • 7-17 (3-8 SWAC)

    • #358 KenPom (-22.31 AdjEM)

    • -14.1 WAB (-.671 per game)

    • #359 NET

    • Quad records: 0-1 / 0-3 / 0-2 / 4-11

    • 3-0 outside Division I

A lot of HBCUs schedule a murderer’s row in November and December, non-conference slates that—were they by some miracle to win most or all of them—would establish these teams not only as national championship contenders, but as all-time greats.

Alabama A&M did the exact opposite: they began their season with three consecutive non-D1 games. Unintentionally, that’s a gauntlet for March Badness purposes; if the Bulldogs began their season with three straight non-D1 losses, they’d be instant March Badness legends! (Un)fortunately, they won all of them, so their résumé is just regular bad.

Here’s where you can start seeing the SWAC pecking order develop: the Bulldogs’ three SWAC wins are against 1-seed Mississippi Valley State, 2-seed Arkansas–Pine Bluff, and fellow 4-seed Prairie View A&M.

15. CHICAGO STATE Cougars

    • 4-22 (4-7 NEC)

    • #360 KenPom (-22.83 AdjEM)

    • -15.9 WAB (-.612 per game)

    • #356 NET

    • Quad records: 0-4 / 0-5 / 0-4 / 4-9

    • 0-0 outside Division I

Chicago State is holding their own in their first season in the NEC. Granted, two of their four wins are at home against ineligible, transitioning teams (Le Moyne in their second D1 season and Mercyhurst in their first), but a worse Chicago State team definitely would have lost those games.

Compared to the rest of the 30-team pool, Chicago State’s résumé is actually kinda good. Their -.612 WAB/gm is 26th in the pool and they were also one of just four teams in the pool not to schedule a game outside Division I this season. They almost escaped this top-16 reveal, but…

…just this Thursday, they suffered a 45-point loss at Fairleigh Dickinson that plummeted them back into the 360s in KenPom. They’re the fifth least efficient team in the country by this metric. They also haven’t won a game higher than Q4, while some teams with better overall résumé metrics have won multiple.

A 4-seed seems correct.

16. PRAIRIE VIEW A&M Panthers

    • 4-20 (3-8 SWAC)

    • #346 KenPom (-17.97 AdjEM)

    • -14.7 WAB (-.639 per game)

    • #347 NET

    • Quad records: 0-4 / 0-3 / 0-3 / 3-10

    • 1-0 outside Division I

This last spot was essentially a toss-up between Prairie View A&M and Central Arkansas, so let’s look at Central Arkansas’ metrics here too:

17. CENTRAL ARKANSAS Bears

    • 6-20 (2-11 ASUN)

    • #349 KenPom (-18.99 AdjEM)

    • -15.3 WAB (-.638 per game)

    • #351 NET

    • Quad records: 0-3 / 0-3 / 0-4 / 4-10

    • 2-0 outside Division I

These résumés are nearly identical at the quadrant level and Central Arkansas has marginally worse metrics, so why did I give the nod to the Panthers?

Well, not all Q4 wins are created equal. All three of Prairie View’s have come in the SWAC, two of them against 1-seed Mississippi Valley State and 2-seed Arkansas–Pine Bluff. And three of Central Arkansas’ Q4 wins are also against awful teams: 1-seed The Citadel, 2-seed Bellarmine, and West Georgia (who would have been in this reveal if they were eligible).

But the Bears’ fourth Q4 win (well, their first chronologically), was a nine-point, double-overtime home win against UNC Asheville, who currently sits at #164 in the NET. The Q3/Q4 border for home games is #160, so if UNC Asheville were to rise just four spots, this win would become Q3. This result is so much better than anything Prairie View has that it more than cancels out the difference in efficiency metrics. Welcome to the top 16, Prairie View!

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And there you have it! The reveal is complete!

Stay tuned for the full March Badness bracket reveal. As usual, it’ll come at some point in the week after Selection Sunday!