The 2025 Best Available Bracket
Eli's third annual quest to find the strongest possible field of 68
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It’s that time again!
In case you’re new here: in 2023, I made a video essay in defense of the “double ladder” conference tournament format (most famously used by the WCC) in which the top two seeds get byes all the way to the semifinals.
Watch that video if you haven’t already—I think it’s good, but I’m biased. If you don’t have 20 minutes to spare, though, I can summarize it in four main points:
One-bid leagues are incentivized to send their best team to the NCAA Tournament so they have a better chance to win a game and earn more money for the conference.
Intuitively, this would mean they just send their regular season champion, but conference tournaments also make money, so one-bid leagues should hold a conference tournament that heavily favors their best team, thus the double ladder.
Multi-bid leagues should not use this format as their best teams are already at-large locks.
Having stronger teams represent one-bid leagues in the NCAA Tournament makes for a more exciting March Madness.
I’m headcanoning that the Sun Belt Conference watched my video because, beginning this year, their conference tournament is the longest double ladder that’s ever been used at the Division I level, if not for any competition ever.
This league ended with the regular season title being shared between four teams who finished at 13-5. South Alabama and James Madison earned their spots on the top rung of the ladder via group tiebreakers, but according to efficiency metrics, Arkansas State and Troy were marginally better. Any one of these teams would have been good representatives for the league in the Big Dance, so a bracket that made it almost impossible for any of them to lose to an undeserving representative was a surefire way to give them a puncher’s chance in the field of 68.
For the past two years since publishing that video essay, I’ve gone through and determined what the NCAA Tournament bracket would have looked like if the 68 worthiest teams comprised the field.
To do this, I give every one-bid league’s bid to the conference’s worthiest member and remove all multi-bid league bid stealers, replacing them with worthier at-large hopefuls.
The goal is to find the Best Available field of 68. Let’s get started.
Clarifications
As usual, I’d like to clarify three things:
My intent is not to rain on anyone’s parade. If your favorite mid-major made the NCAA Tournament and I say in this piece that they “shouldn’t have”, please understand that I don’t mean that as a personal slight against the team. I just think they had a less impressive regular season than the team I picked over them.
To reiterate: I love conference tournaments and believe getting rid of them would be a net negative. Every conference sending their regular season champion as their autobid would be awful, if only because—as shown above—a conference’s regular season champ isn’t always their worthiest NCAA Tournament representative. Out of 23 one-bid leagues this year, I think the conference tournament 1-seed should not have gotten the autobid in five of them.
The results a team achieves after Selection Sunday change nothing about whether they were the most deserving team in the regular season. I include this boilerplate clarification because normally one or more teams I remove from the bracket in this exercise end up pulling off a big upset, but that wasn’t the case this year, as all of the 1-4 seeds advanced to the Round of 32 for the first time since 2017. Still, it’s something to keep in mind for thought experiments like these.
With that out of the way, let’s get into the nitty gritty.
Methodology
Choosing a “worthiest” representative is kind of arbitrary. You could award it based on any number of résumé considerations, on efficiency metrics, or even just on their position in the conference standings.
My approach is to weight résumé and metrics pretty much evenly. I’m going to take a snapshot of each league at the time their conference tournament began and pick the team I think had the most impressive combination of high metrics and quality wins in the regular season. Essentially, I’m looking for the team I think would be the scariest for a high-seeded opponent to face in the Round of 64.
As an example, let’s look at a league where different approaches will give you different results: the CAA. The CAA’s highest ranked team on KenPom when the conference tournament began was their 2-seed, UNC Wilmington, who sat at #110, well above 1-seed Towson (#149). However, of the league’s top three teams (also including 3-seed Charleston at #150 on KenPom), UNC Wilmington is the only one without a win above Quad 3. In fact, they only played one game above Q3 all season: a Q1 game at Kansas that they obviously lost.
Metrically, the bid deserves to go to UNC Wilmington, but it’s hard to say any team is the most deserving when their schedule was so bereft of quality games. Meanwhile, Charleston had a Q2 win at Saint Joseph’s (who was one NET rank short of making that game Q1) and Towson had a Q2 win…at UNC Wilmington. And that’s where the résumé argument against UNC Wilmington falls apart: they were the only team in the CAA high enough in the NET to qualify as a Q2 road game, so it tracks that they’re the only team who didn’t play a game in Q2 all year.
When you’re that far ahead of your peers in the metrics, the lack of one Q2 win should not erase the rest of your accomplishments—at least not in my opinion—so I think UNC Wilmington was the most deserving bid-winner.
They were also the actual bid-winner, and that’s gonna be a theme in this year’s Best Available Bracket. Conference tournament season this year was unusually chalky, so the bracket we actually got isn’t really that different from what I ended up with for the Best Available.
I’ll show my work. Let’s review every one-bid league—that is, every league that received only one NCAA Tournament bid and had that team get an 11-seed or worse.
Autobid reassignments
Let’s start with the ones I think got it right.
Bullseyes
A-10: (1) VCU
No contest. VCU was #30 on KenPom at conference tournament time and the closest team to them was (3) Dayton at #72. Dayton had three Q1 wins to VCU’s two, but VCU crushed them (and everyone else in the league) in every other noteworthy stat. If not for Seton Hall being so bad that VCU’s neutral-court loss to them fell just barely into Q4, VCU would have been an at-large lock.
C-USA: (1) Liberty
No contest. Regrettably, Liberty was so far ahead of everyone else in efficiency metrics that it’s not even worth recapping this league. They were #62 on KenPom while (2) Jacksonville State was next closest at #121.
Missouri Valley: (1) Drake
No contest, and I’m watching them play in the Round of 32 while I type this. This league earned four Q1 wins all year: two of them by Drake and two of them from other teams beating Drake on the road. (2) Bradley was one of those teams, but they were an awful 2-6 in Q2 (while Drake was 4-0).
Big West: (1) UC San Diego
No contest, even with (2) UC Irvine lurking. UC San Diego was #39 on KenPom to UC Irvine’s #66, and UC San Diego’s win at Utah State was the league’s best win (as well as the only Q1 win that didn’t come from beating a fellow Big West opponent).
Ivy: (1) Yale
No contest. Not only did Yale win this league by four games, but they were #71 on KenPom to (2) Cornell’s #132, and they were the only team in the league with a winning record in Q2. Weirdly, the only Q1 win in the Ivy League came from Columbia, who finished last in the league by three games but beat Villanova on the road. You can’t predict college basketball.
WAC: (2) Grand Canyon
Okay, this one’s a contest. Grand Canyon didn’t even win this league; (1) Utah Valley did by two games. But Grand Canyon was a good amount ahead on KenPom (#99 to #122) and they earned one of the league’s two Q2 wins, neutral court vs. Stanford, while Utah Valley went 0-5 in Q2.
This league did earn a Q1 win and it wasn’t by either of these teams. It was by (5) Seattle, who won at UC San Diego in November. They also earned the other Q2 win, at Washington, giving them easily the league’s best ledger against quality opponents. But Seattle went, no joke, 0-11 in Q3 this season. I think this is the weirdest résumé I’ve ever seen.
CAA: (2) UNC Wilmington
I covered this one in the Methodology section. To be clear, I think (3) Charleston was their closest competition, not (1) Towson.
Big South: (1) High Point
No contest. High Point was #87 on KenPom while no one else was anywhere close, and they were the only team who earned a win above Q3.
Horizon: (1) Robert Morris
This was a two-horse race between Robert Morris and (3) Milwaukee. Milwaukee led the league on KenPom at #138 while Robert Morris was only #153, but Robert Morris won the league outright and had the superior résumé: 2-0 in Q2 vs. 1-1, and 7-4 in Q3 vs. 6-7. I’m giving the edge to Robert Morris here, both because the difference between #138 and #153 on KenPom is negligible and because Robert Morris swept Milwaukee in the regular season.
Southland: (1) McNeese
Of all the “no contest” leagues, this one was the least of a contest. McNeese went 19-1 in the league and won it by five games. Next.
MAC: (1) Akron
No contest. Akron went 17-1 in the league and won it by three games. They were #100 on KenPom, with the next closest being rival (3) Kent State at #129. By virtue of losing six fewer conference tilts than Kent State, Akron’s résumé was far superior, including a sterling 18-0 Q4 record. Shoutout to Central Michigan, though, for earning the MAC’s only Q1 win, at George Mason, and then flopping so hard in league play that they didn’t even qualify for the conference tournament.
ASUN: (1) Lipscomb
Lipscomb shared the regular season title with (2) North Alabama, but Lipscomb was #83 on KenPom to North Alabama’s #114, and they had one more Q2 win and three more Q3 wins.
America East: (1) Bryant
No contest. On Opening Day, (2) Vermont earned the best win the league would see all year, a Q2 win at UAB, but then they crashed hard in their next game at Auburn (a 51-point loss) and never truly recovered. Bryant finished the regular season at #157 on KenPom, while Vermont finished at #226, behind even (3) Maine at #224.
MEAC: (1) Norfolk State
Norfolk State shared the regular season title with (2) SC State, and they weren’t that far ahead on KenPom (#176 to #191), but their résumé dwarfs SC State’s. Not only did they earn the league’s only Q2 win, at High Point, but their three Q3 wins were as many as the rest of the league had combined, none of which came from SC State.
That’s 14 autobids I think are “correct”, leaving nine more I think aren’t. And even some of these upcoming conferences were pretty borderline.
Missed the Mark
SoCon: (1) Chattanooga over (6) Wofford
The SoCon had six good teams this year and zero great ones. Here’s how they looked on KenPom heading into the conference tournament:
Chattanooga — #111
UNC Greensboro — #130
Samford — #105
ETSU — #134
Furman — #149
Wofford — #132
That’s a tightly packed group, so it’s a lot less surprising than usual that the 6-seed won this thing.
All of them had fairly similar résumés, too. Check this out.
ETSU and UNC Greensboro are clearly the worst here, but all six teams proved they could beat their peers on a regular basis.
You could pretty reasonably say this bid belonged to Chattanooga, Samford, or Furman and it would be hard to argue against it. I’m choosing Chattanooga for one simple reason: they managed to beat each of the other five teams on the road.
Summit: (4) North Dakota State over (1) Omaha
We have to ignore (2) St. Thomas here because they were still ineligible for postseason play under the NCAA’s archaic transition rule. This was thankfully their final year of ineligibility and, as a local, I can’t wait to cheer them on to a hopeful NCAA Tournament debut next year.
Omaha won this league outright, but they didn’t have the best résumé or efficiency metrics, being the only team in the top four not to record a win higher than Q3. The best efficiency metrics belonged to St. Thomas, but ignoring them, it was about a toss-up between (3) South Dakota State at #121 and (4) North Dakota State at #130.
North Dakota State gets the nod here because they had the league’s only Q1 win, at Santa Clara, and they had two Q2 wins to South Dakota State’s one.
As it stands, both Dakota State schools flopped out in the quarterfinals and Omaha earned their first ever bid, and I am quite alright with that.
Sun Belt: (4) Arkansas State over (3) Troy
I kind of went over this one in the intro, but I’ll lay it out in more detail here as well.
This league ended in a four-way tie between the aforementioned two teams, (1) South Alabama, and (2) James Madison. On KenPom, they looked like this heading into the conference tournament:
South Alabama — #119
James Madison — #151
Troy — #94
Arkansas State — #88
Arkansas State and Troy were pretty much neck and neck here, and both had similar performances in Quads 2 and 3. Arkansas State comes out ahead thanks to the league’s only Q1 win, and a convincing one at that, at Memphis.
Big Sky: (1) Northern Colorado over (2) Montana
I went back and forth on this one. Northern Colorado entered the conference tournament at #135 on KenPom and Montana entered at #178, but Montana beat Northern Colorado on the road for the league’s only Q2 win of the year.
I’m giving this to Northern Colorado because of that efficiency difference being the reason a road win over them was Q2 in the first place, combined with the fact that they had two more Q3 wins.
MAAC: (2) Merrimack over (6) Mount St. Mary’s
The race here is between Merrimack and (1) Quinnipiac, and Merrimack wins it easily. They were #184 on KenPom to Quinnipiac’s #213, and they had the league’s only win above Q3 all year: a Q2 win at Troy.
Patriot: (1) Bucknell over (2) American
I went back and forth on this one also. Bucknell and American tied for the regular season title, with the former at #216 on KenPom and the latter at #249. Neither team’s résumé was any good at all, with each earning just one win in Q3 and the rest of their wins in Q4.
American’s Q3 win was definitely better, as they won a home game over George Washington (in what was probably closer to a neutral environment as both schools are located in DC), while Bucknell’s best win was at Delaware (who were just barely on the right side of the Q3/Q4 cutoff).
Neither win was all that impressive, so I’ll give this to Bucknell on superior efficiency metrics.
Tangentially, sitting below this duo is (3) Colgate, whose résumé was almost as weird as Seattle’s.
OVC: (1) Southeast Missouri over (2) SIU Edwardsville
The OVC uses a double ladder for their conference tournament and it did its job here, as these two top dogs faced off for the autobid. In this case, I think the “wrong” team won.
I could say that’s because Southeast Missouri entered the tourney at #205 on KenPom while SIU Edwardsville entered at #230. I could also say that’s because, while both teams had underwhelming résumés, Southeast Missouri swept SIU Edwardsville in the regular season. Those reasons would be consistent with my logic in the rest of this exercise.
In actuality, though, the real reason I think SIU Edwardsville did not deserve an NCAA Tournament bid is that they lost by 25 points to Green Bay. It was on the road, granted, but it’s hard for me to consider you deserving of anything when that’s on your ledger.
NEC: (1) Central Connecticut over (3) Saint Francis
This one is actually no contest. A lot of one-bid leagues had a clear frontrunner this year, but the NEC was the only one in which that frontrunner didn’t win the autobid. Central Connecticut was 110 spots higher than the next closest league member on KenPom. That’s enough for this to be no contest even disregarding the fact that they also had the league’s only Q2 win (at Saint Joseph’s, which was one NET rank away from being Q1).
SWAC: (1) Southern over (5) Alabama State
Southern was #228 on KenPom with the next closest league member being (2) Jackson State at #255, and Southern had the league’s only Q2 win, at Louisiana Tech. Easy.
Bid-Stealer Elimination
Replacing all one-bid league representatives with their league’s worthiest team is a great start, but it doesn’t get us all the way to the Best Available Bracket. To truly reach the pinnacle, we must also say goodbye to the bid-stealers from multi-bid leagues.
Last year there were five of those, but this year there was only one: Colorado State out of the Mountain West. So we’ll replace them with the first team the committee had on the wrong side of the bubble. Goodbye Colorado State; hello West Virginia!
You could argue that this actually makes for a worse bracket, as Colorado State had been red hot prior to conference tournament season and West Virginia had been kind of cold. I might even agree with that argument. But West Virginia was one of the most ridiculous snubs in the 64-team era and Colorado State very much did lose at home to UC Riverside and on a neutral court to Washington this season.
The Seed List
Now that we’ve reassigned all of our bids, let’s re-seed the bottom of the bracket. I’ll start by ranking all of our new bids in the full seed list, as the committee does. To do this, I’ll take the committee’s 1-68 seed list, remove the teams whose bids I reassigned, and slot the new teams in where I think the NCAA would.
That gives us this list:
Texas (at-large bye)
Xavier (First Four)
San Diego State (First Four)
Drake
VCU
North Carolina (First Four)
West Virginia (First Four)
UC San Diego
McNeese
Liberty
Yale
High Point
Akron
Grand Canyon
Lipscomb
Arkansas State
UNC Wilmington
Chattanooga
Northern Colorado
Robert Morris
North Dakota State
Central Connecticut
Norfolk State
Bryant
Southern
Southeast Missouri
Bucknell
Merrimack
The Bracket
And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for. Here’s the Best Available Bracket:
As usual, I left the matchups the same as the real bracket where possible.
As I noted earlier, this bracket really didn’t change very much. Texas gets a bye now, which…gross. But otherwise, only two teams lost seeds: Bryant fell from a 15 to a 16 and North Carolina fell from an 11 to a 12 because removing Colorado State’s stolen bid pushed the lower First Four matchup down to the 12 line in their place.
Most of the teams I added aren’t that much better than the ones they replaced, the obvious exception being the NEC, which replaced Saint Francis (the worst team in the actual field of 68) with Central Connecticut (a 15-seed on this bracket).
Normally, I like to end this piece talking about how much scarier the Best Available Bracket would be to high major teams, but the minuscule nature of the changes made on this bracket—and the ridiculous power of the top of Division I this season—kind of render that impossible. Bryant is probably scarier to Houston than SIU Edwardsville was, but come on; Houston isn’t losing that game. Wisconsin probably sweats Chattanooga a little more than they sweated Montana, but even there, the secondary effect is that Tennessee’s Round of 64 opponent, Wofford, is switched out for a team lower than them on KenPom. It’s just busts all the way down.
And so instead I end this piece somewhat nihilistically. This year, the bracket we actually got was about as close to the Best Available Bracket as you could realistically hope for, and in the end it didn’t even matter. The boost we would have gotten from booting out the few undeserving bid-winners would have been so minute that it almost certainly wouldn’t have changed the snoozetastic chalkiness we witnessed over the weekend.
Eat Arby’s.